Chapter 2. The Blood Wind Blowing from the Desert
The Great Desert is a barren land that constantly changes shape, with enormous dunes appearing and disappearing beneath the relentless sandstorms.
Even so, traces of stubborn life can be found everywhere, from venomous insects and desert snakes to hardened plants and the caravans that cross the vast desert.
For the merchant Jin Chung (ēåæ ), this journey is particularly important.
It is the final journey of the caravan business to which he has devoted half his life, and it is also a journey with his beloved daughter, Jin So-hye (ēē“ ę §).
When Jin Chung was young and desperately poor, his wife died after giving birth to So-hye following a difficult delivery.
Unable to afford medicine, her weakened body could not withstand the ordeal of childbirth.
Jin Chung spent an entire day weeping while holding his newborn daughter, then entrusted her to a close friend for one year.
After becoming a desert merchant, he returned a year later with enough money to give his friend a house and capital to start a business.
Although his daughter initially cried because she did not recognize him, their blood relationship quickly brought them together, and within only a few days she began treating him as her father.
After spending a month with her, Jin Chung repeatedly stroked his sleeping daughter’s cheeks before leaving once more for the desert.
Fifteen years passed, and he eventually became wealthy enough to buy an entire city.
The greatest hardship he endured throughout those years was repeatedly parting from his daughter.
Now, after gradually winding down his business, this journey has become his final one.
So-hye, now a young woman, refuses to let him leave without her and insists on accompanying him despite his repeated attempts to dissuade her.
As a sandstorm begins, Jin Chung tells his daughter to cover herself and secure her clothing.
Their affectionate conversation reveals how close the father and daughter are, with So-hye joking that she will never marry and will stay with her father forever.
Jin Chung laughs and teases his daughter about becoming old enough to marry.
This is an exceptionally happy father-daughter relationship.
Jin Chung completes his final business without taking any profit and distributes the remaining benefits among the people with whom he has traded.
They all regret seeing him retire and wish him and his daughter a safe journey home.
As the caravan heads toward the Central Plains, Jin Chung feels more satisfied than ever because his long years of hardship are finally ending and he can look forward to spending his life with his daughter.
When another sandstorm appears, the caravan takes shelter behind a dune in temporary tents.
They remain ready to move because a prolonged storm could bury them alive.
Fortunately, the storm ends soon, and the caravan resumes its journey.
Suddenly, the wandering warrior Jeon Baek (å Øä¼Æ) raises his hand.
Everyone stops and becomes alert.
Jeon Baek has served as Jin Chung’s escort for nearly ten years and was originally hired from the wandering warrior market to protect the merchant’s family and goods from desert bandits and outsiders.
Many guards came and went, but Jeon Baek remained their leader and faithfully protected Jin Chung for more than a decade.
His martial skill and leadership made him one of the greatest contributors to the success of Jin Chung’s business.
Now, however, Jeon Baek senses something unusual.
A white figure rises beyond a distant dune.
White-clad riders on completely white horses gradually appear around it.
They are the Baek Sa-pung, known as the White Sand Wind.
They have also come to be called the “Death Wind of the Desert.”
Almost nobody knows anything about them because most people who encounter them do not survive.
They rarely appear and usually ignore small merchants, instead targeting large caravans.
Those they attack are slaughtered without exception, regardless of age or gender, and even their camels are killed.
The Baek Sa-pung quickly surround Jin Chung’s entire caravan.
Jin Chung is horrified because these are the people he least wanted to encounter during his years as a merchant.
He realizes that perhaps his success and survival until now were partly due to never having crossed paths with them.
Although Jeon Baek and his guards are highly skilled martial artists, the Baek Sa-pung are on an entirely different level.
Jin Chung remembers the famous merchant Hwang Ok-san (é»ēę£), one of the greatest merchants of the Central Plains, who was once found dead alongside his friend Yi Sa-min (ļ§”ä½æę¼), a master of the Gongdong Sect, and twenty disciples who had accompanied them.
Only their bones remained, along with a white flag bearing the character “é¢Ø.”
The incident caused the Gongdong Sect and the entire martial world to erupt in outrage, but an investigation found no trace of the Baek Sa-pung because the desert was simply too vast.
Since then, the Baek Sa-pung have been regarded as enemies of the martial world and a nightmare for merchants.
One of the Baek Sa-pung raises his hand, and the white riders descend from the dunes like a wind.
Jeon Baek desperately orders his men to surround the caravan and prepare for battle, but his guards are already pale with fear.
He steps forward and asks the Baek Sa-pung what they want.
One of the white-masked men laughs and says there is no reason to answer a question from someone who is about to become a corpse.
He casually extends his hand, yet the seemingly slow movement pierces Jeon Baek’s throat before the warrior can react.
The strongest warrior of the wandering warrior market dies almost instantly.
His death becomes the signal for a one-sided slaughter.
Around twenty Baek Sa-pung warriors massacre more than fifty guards and over a hundred merchants.
The desert becomes a scene of horror as white figures flash through the caravan and blood fills the sand.
More than half of Jin Chung’s people are killed almost immediately.
Knowing that everyone will eventually die, Jin Chung grabs So-hye and runs over a dune with the instinctive desperation of someone facing death.
But another group of white riders is waiting beyond the dune.
Jin Chung, So-hye, and the remaining members of the caravan collapse in despair.
As the Baek Sa-pung surround them, Jin Chung desperately digs a hole in the sand and hides his daughter inside it.
He knows it is probably useless because the enemies can clearly see what he is doing, and even if she survives, she could never survive alone in the desert.
Still, his refusal to accept his daughter’s death drives him to continue.
He begs the white-masked leader to spare his daughter.
The leader coldly replies that merely encountering them is their fault and that being powerless is another fault.
He prepares to draw his sword.
Then a flash of light suddenly catches his eyes.
Across a small dune stands a mysterious figure holding a broad saber.
The stranger looks like a vagabond.
His long, disheveled hair is covered with desert dust, his ragged trousers barely fit his tall frame, and his torn clothing leaves his powerful, sun-darkened shoulders exposed.
He stands there with an expression even more indifferent than the broad saber hanging casually from his hand.
The white riders approach him.
The stranger approaches them as well, carrying his saber over his shoulder.
When they stop in the middle of the desert, the Baek Sa-pung glare at him threateningly.
The stranger, however, casually looks over Jin Chung’s group and then lowers his broad, heavy saber diagonally toward the sand.
Ignoring an opponent in the middle of a confrontation is an enormous insult.
The Baek Sa-pung, who have never been treated this way, attack almost immediately.
The foremost white-clad rider charges toward the stranger.
In a flash of saber light, the rider is cut cleanly in two before he can even draw his weapon.
Both the Baek Sa-pung and Jin Chung’s group stare in shock.
The mysterious warrior has not even changed his original posture.
After a brief silence, the Baek Sa-pung recover from their shock and charge him in a frenzy.
The stranger scoops up a handful of sand with his broad saber and spins his body.
A powerful blade wind sends the sand flying toward the attackers.
The Baek Sa-pung warriors scream as they fall from their horses, many clutching their faces as blood pours from their eyes and wounds.
More than half of them are killed in moments.
The apparent leader of the Baek Sa-pung grits his teeth and attacks with the remaining warriors.
The stranger suddenly shoots forward and passes straight through the middle of their formation.
The sound of weapons colliding and screams rings across the desert.
When the positions of the stranger and the Baek Sa-pung reverse, almost all of the remaining attackers have been cut apart.
Only about five badly injured warriors remain.
The Baek Sa-pung, once feared as the death wind of the desert, experience the terror of death themselves for the first time.
Their former killing intent disappears, leaving them trembling like ordinary, helpless human beings.
Their leader asks the stranger who he is and whether he holds some grudge against them.
The stranger instead asks who they are and what grudge they have against the merchants.
Before they can answer, another blade wind flashes through the air.
The remaining five Baek Sa-pung are killed simultaneously.
Jin Chung desperately calls out to the mysterious warrior, addressing him as “Young Master.”
The warrior, who has slaughtered fifty Baek Sa-pung warriors in less time than it takes to drink a cup of tea, carries his bloodless saber over his shoulder and walks away into the desert with the sun behind him.
After surviving the boundary between life and death, Jin Chung and the others finally realize that they are alive.
The stranger is already disappearing into the distance.
When Jin Chung calls out again, the warrior turns around.
For the first time, Jin Chung sees his face clearly.
He appears to be only a little over twenty years old, yet his eyes are as indifferent as those of an old man who has already lived through the entire world.
His sun-darkened, dust-covered face and tightly closed lips form an unexpectedly striking combination, as though washing himself might somehow diminish rather than enhance his appearance.
Jin Chung immediately understands many things about the young man through the instincts and judgment he has developed as a merchant.
He realizes that thanking someone like this would mean nothing to him and might only create unnecessary distance.
So instead, Jin Chung asks the stranger to take them with him.
For the first time, a trace of thought appears in the stranger’s eyes, showing that he is conflicted between the inconvenience and the fact that he cannot simply refuse them.
He tells them that he is heading to the Central Plains and that they may follow if they are going in the same direction.
And so, the Blood Wind of the Central Plains begins blowing from the distant frontier.
