## Chapter 262 – Counterattack (13)
‘Wow… how do they do that…?’
Like a black cat disappearing into the darkness, Hyeryung’s figure was crossing the shadows, vanishing into the dark.
Carla, watching the scene through the slightly open front door, couldn’t help but let out a silent gasp.
“Apparently, it’s training that everyone in the Tang Clan receives…”
“But… does a pharmacist need to learn something like that…?”
“That’s just one part of the Tang Clan.
On the surface, the Tang Clan is famous for its bioengineering and pharmaceutical technology…
But there’s a reason why those aspects became so well-known…”
As Yui whispered, Carla’s eyes grew wider and more curious.
After the recapture of the human habitation zone in the distant past, Chao Xing faced a period of national civil war and plunder due to the imbalance of power, technology, and resources. This era was later unified into an empire, finally suppressing the chaos.
In the Chao Xing language, it was called Si Chuan.
Sichuan, a city in Chao Xing with a unique topography where four rivers converged, benefited from agriculture and industry. For generations, the warlord family with the surname ‘Tang’ ruled the area.
This family, protecting Sichuan from numerous invasion attempts due to its rich terrain, naturally became strong to defend themselves.
In most cases, other warlords would raise strong warriors, organize armies, and engage in frontal warfare to seize land.
However, the Tang Clan of Sichuan adopted a strategy of ambush.
The Tang Clan assassins, skilled in various martial arts for assassination, assassination techniques, and silent swordsmanship, utilized medicines and poisons made from various herbs and poisonous plants that grew abundantly in Sichuan’s natural environment.
From highly toxic substances that could cause death within seconds of a mere scratch, to mists that could completely cripple someone half a day after inhalation.
In addition, there were smokescreens with particles so fine they wouldn’t settle for an hour once released, and toxic liquids that could dissolve a body, leaving only bones.
Of course, some were powerful enough to be used in actual warfare, but they were difficult to use unless one was prepared for mutual destruction.
For this reason, they navigated the turbulent Warring States period by secretly taking down enemies from behind, rather than stepping forward.
Compared to frontal warfare, which was possible with sufficient supplies and strategy, assassination required more thought and carried more risk. However, the economic and security benefits were incomparably superior.
Without fighting armies directly, they could cripple the enemy through assassinations of key figures and sabotage of military operations.
Sometimes, by assassinating leaders who dreamed of war in advance, the Tang Clan’s secret agents could extinguish the very sparks of conflict, acting as a powerful blade.
Therefore, many surrounding lords, each with their own strong power, feared the Tang Clan’s sword, which could strike from the darkness at any moment.
Thanks to this, they avoided touching the Tang Clan while fighting each other. Instead of building military strength, the Tang Clan focused on technological advancement, further developing the techniques they had used to nurture their secret agents.
One of these was pharmaceutical technology, derived from their skilled handling of poisons.
“The direct descendants of the Tang Clan all undergo considerable training.
So, Hyeryung, as the third daughter of the direct line, would be no exception…”
“Wow… I think I have a new perspective on her…”
In short, Hyeryung was at least as skilled as an expert when it came to dealing with other humans, especially when it came to attacking someone.
Most of the combat techniques she had shown so far involved strategically limiting the opponent’s movements or poisoning them using various drugs.
Especially since she mostly dealt with non-human monsters, she couldn’t be fully prepared, as she was fighting on a slightly different level from her specialty.
“Ugh… I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Seriously. You’re breaking the flow of the game.
Hurry back!!”
“That guy went just a while ago, and now he’s going again?”
As one man got up from the card game, clutching his waist, complaints poured out from the other men.
The men who put down their cards on the table to wait for him started drinking their liquor, counting money from their pockets, and doing other things.
“Gulp!! Gulp!!
Cough…!! Ubehet!!
What is this…!! Metal… needle…?”
In the meantime, one man was gulping down the liquor in a large wooden cup when he suddenly coughed and spat out something that had entered his mouth.
“Crazy bastards… are you trying to kill me?
Dare to sell me liquor with something like this in it?
I’m going to cause a scene next time I come to buy liquor, damn it?”
The man, who had almost swallowed the very thin metal needle with the liquor, started grumbling, throwing it carelessly onto the floor behind him before resuming his drink.
Meanwhile, a heavy sound began to be heard from the direction of the bathroom.
Hearing the sound of someone falling, another man quickly got up and walked towards the bathroom, calling out to the man inside.
“Hey!! Is something wrong in there?
Answer me!! Is something wrong?”
Since they were storing important cargo, the man took out a knife from his pocket in case of an emergency and approached the bathroom, speaking to the man inside.
With cautious silence, the man, weapon in hand, kicked open the bathroom door and thrust himself inside.
“Haaah!! Don’t mov…
You idiot…
I knew this would happen to you…
Even if I told you to drink moderately…”
Seeing the man lying face down on the bathroom floor, snoring peacefully, the man frowned and raised both hands above his shoulders in disbelief.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Take a look at this spaced-out face.
He’s passed out drunk.”
“Hehehehe!! What a moron, this…
I guess we have to take his money, huh?”
“From now on, let’s just say that’s his house!! Hehehe!!”
In the end, the man, smiling mockingly at the man in the bathroom, slammed the door shut and came out, feeling a strange tingling in his hand as he looked at his palm.
“What…? Is the handle old…?
Bad luck…”
It didn’t seem like a serious injury, but the man clicked his tongue and sucked the blood from a small bead that had formed in the corner of his palm.
“Well, let’s leave this idiot and start a new game.”
“Are we raising the stakes this time?”
But, at that very moment.
“Huh? So confident, huh?
You’re going to shit blood… Keuheok…!!”
One of the men, who had been laughing, suddenly started retching, and then quickly vomited blood, causing the men next to him to rush towards him in a flurry.
“Hick!! What…!!”
“Did you have some kind of disease?
Hey!! Wake up!!”
Even as they slapped the man’s cheeks and called out to him, the man who had vomited blood was convulsing uncontrollably.
The men who watched him tried to give him first aid, but it didn’t seem to be helping much.
“He’s vomiting blood!!
Quick, make him lie down!!”
“What the hell is going on… Kkuaaak…!! Cough!!”
But soon another man started vomiting blood, and a sense of unease began to spread in the men’s eyes as they realized something was wrong.
“I… It’s an attack…!!
What did we get hit with…?”
“Hiiiik!? Damn it!!
I don’t want to di……
Keuheokryeok… Eoleogeot!!”
As another man vomited blood and collapsed to the floor, the man who had been safe until now gripped his weapon and continued to look around.
But, suddenly realizing it was poison, he remembered the small wound on his palm.
Looking down at his palm, the man discovered that the area around the puncture wound had turned black, and he stared blankly at it.
Just as he began to feel dizzy and nauseous, and collapsed to the floor with great difficulty.
In his eyes, only the figure of a black-haired maiden who had suddenly appeared as if in a hallucination, looking down at him indifferently, was reflected.
“You put up a bit of a fight for a change, huh?”
The liquor and food they drank, the routes they moved along, and the objects they touched.
With meticulous calculations that exploited human weaknesses, she swept everyone away naturally with just a few manipulations, without even lifting a finger.
Because she left no trace of the battle, it would take quite a bit of effort to figure out the truth, even if this situation was discovered.
Having effectively eliminated all evidence, Hyeryung had neatly wiped out all the men.
She strutted towards the entrance with a wiggle in her hips, slightly opened the door, and smiled brightly at the women waiting outside.
“It’s over, so go in and get the stuff.
Don’t touch anything else inside?
Unless you want to die vomiting blood like those guys.”
“D… Did you… kill… them all…?”
“Of course? Oh, I left one alive.
I needed someone to be the murderer who poisoned the others.
He lost money in a card game and, harboring a grudge, poisoned his colleagues…
It’s a perfect scenario, isn’t it?”
At Carla’s question, her voice trembling slightly, Hyeryung smiled and shrugged proudly.
But at Yui’s voice, which raised an objection to her, Hyeryung’s smile faded slightly…
“Hyeryung… you went too far…”
“What are you talking about?”
“You could have just knocked them all out and taken the research papers and materials…
There was no need to kill them all like this…”
“That’s an interesting thing to say, Kazunomiya.
Let’s say we left them all alive, as you said?
Then what would the survivors say?”
“……”
“If there were testimonies from them, the fact that someone had infiltrated this place would remain, right?
Then, if they continued the investigation based on those testimonies?
Information about us, who passed by this area, would leak out in some way.
You’re not being so naive as to think that we can hide everything just by wearing these cloaks, are you?”
Yui suggested another plan in response to Hyeryung’s disregard for life, but in the end, Hyeryung’s words were true: this was the best way to handle the current situation.
“So, putting the blame on one person is the solution…?
There’s no guarantee it will work as you think…!!”
“It’s a slightly more likely option.
At least with this method, we can forcibly give them more choices to worry about.”
The opponent was none other than the Laratina Cartel.
Leaving room for retaliation against such people, no matter how noble they were in another country, was something to be avoided.
If they decided to ignore international affairs and their own position and pushed their way in, the continent would effectively be at war from that day on.
“But… the lives that are lost don’t come back…”
“Are you thinking of your family or something?
Ah? That’s why that ruthless Enic also died?
Do you think I’m going to end up like that barbaric monster?”
The atmosphere in the house turned cold at Hyeryung’s chilling warning.
Until now, she hadn’t been so hostile to Yui.
Nevertheless, Yui’s eyes were tinged with a small sense of futility at Hyeryung’s tone, which even brought up painful memories of her family.
“I’ve been putting up with you until now…
Do I look like a pushover because I’ve been playing along?
Don’t test my patience, Kazunomiya.
It’s enough to indulge just the young lady.”
In the meantime, Eloise, making an effort to ignore the corpses lying on the floor, began to gather the materials in the room into the trunk with expansion magic, when she suddenly straightened her back and looked towards the door.
“Someone’s approaching…!!”
“No, to be exact, they’re already next to you.”
At the voice of a man coming from beside her, everyone’s gaze turned.
