The Uninvited Guest
That evening, Ouyang Qiangang packed a simple bundle of the things he would take on the morrow's journey and shared tea with Du Jin-seong in the pavilion of the annex garden.
Du Jin-seong wore the face of a man burdened with thought, and did not so much as touch his cup.
He spoke at last.
"Young Master, please take me with you. Elder Hwang is not accompanying you either—if you leave me behind as well, who is to attend to you?"
Ouyang Qiangang set down his teacup and regarded him.
"Your brilliance and talent are not things to be left rotting at my side as a mere attendant, Du Jin-seong."
His voice was gentle, yet it carried a weight that brooked no refusal.
"These past months, with no one else I could trust, I have overworked the elderly Hwang Nodae shamefully. I want you to take up that duty now—the secret correspondence with Bamboo Forest Manor and our other allies, the management of funds, the matters upon which our family's very future depends. I trust your ability."
Seeing that Ouyang Qiangang had no intention of bending, Du Jin-seong bowed his head with a defeated sigh.
"Hoo… Very well, Young Master. I accept your command."
At that very moment, a subtle change came over Ouyang Qiangang's eyes.
But Du Jin-seong, his gaze sunk to the floor in dejection, did not notice it.
With Akasha's activation of the Four Dantians, Ouyang Qiangang could now release ten thousand of his one hundred thousand nanobots outward to protect himself—all without the slightest interference in his daily life. At the same time, the nanobots' detection range had expanded to a hundred meters, and Akasha could transmit frozen images of everything within that radius directly into his mind. The image transmission did require the full output of ten thousand gang of internal energy, and was limited to one image per minute—but the ever-circulating system of the Transcendent Formless Divine Art, backed by internal energy approaching a hundred thousand gang, bore all of it with ease.
Behind the cover of his teacup, Ouyang Qiangang's lips moved without sound. It was a silent transmission.
From the shadow of a rock some fifty feet away, where he lay concealed in his vigil over Ouyang Qiangang, Hwang Nodae's startled voice rang out. Beneath the surprise lay a faint thread of disbelief.
"I detected nothing at all, Young Master."
"The rear fence, twenty jang from here. Someone whose stealth has reached its absolute peak."
Hwang Nodae was dumbfounded.
"T-twenty jang? How is that even…?"
By the common sense of Murim, even a Transcendent master's detection of presence did not extend past ten jang. Twenty jang was the domain of the Transformation Realm itself.
"I have my own methods."
Ouyang Qiangang cut him off. In his mind's eye floated the frozen image Akasha had sent him: a man in black, clinging to the shadow beneath the fence like a lizard, peering inward. Had he not known where to look, the man's concealment art was so exquisite he would have been near impossible to distinguish even in the image.
With a perfectly calm expression, Ouyang Qiangang spoke to Du Jin-seong.
"Jin-seong, it's late. Go in and rest now."
The moment Du Jin-seong departed, Hwang Nodae's tense voice returned.
"A man capable of stealth that even I cannot sense must be a professional assassin!"
"An assassin, then. Someone sent to kill me, you mean."
"I will deal with him at once!"
"No. I will do it."
Ouyang Qiangang's answer was resolute.
"For the Young Master to face him personally is far too dangerous!"
"You know as well as I do, Nodae, that I've grown rather strong—too strong for such words, wouldn't you say?"
Confidence threaded through Ouyang Qiangang's voice.
"This is a night visitor who came seeking me. As the master of the house, I ought to receive him graciously. And for the man I am now, an intruder like this makes fine practice."
Hwang Nodae fell silent. He was worried, but Ouyang Qiangang was right. He had long known that this young man was no child to be kept from the water's edge.
Ouyang Qiangang fingered his long-cold teacup and began to wait for his guest in the darkness.
Chilho entered the rear garden like a ghost. His movement was so silent it broke not only sound and presence but even the flow of the air itself. Slowly, deliberately, he closed in on Ouyang Qiangang, who sat drinking tea in the pavilion, utterly unguarded.
One jang from the target. The perfect distance for assassination—across more than twenty years in the Blood Sea, he had never once failed from here.
A thousand nyang of silver to kill a sickly invalid who could die any day… the client must be in quite a panic.
He sneered inwardly at the target's leisurely back. Then, planting his foot, he shot into the pavilion as a single streak of black shadow. The blade of his jet-black dagger, reflecting not a sliver of moonlight, drove mercilessly toward the back of Ouyang Qiangang's neck—a strike of perfect assassination that even a master of Murim could not evade.
Ouyang Qiangang, as though aware of nothing, calmly raised his teacup to his lips.
At that exact instant, Akasha's calm voice echoed in his mind.
High-velocity object detected approaching the cervical region. Condensing nanobots in that area to maximum hardness. Defense protocol engaged.
Clang—!
It was not the soft sound of blade parting flesh. A sharp, bizarre ring of metal striking metal shattered the stillness of the pavilion.
The instant the dagger touched his neck, a faint blue pattern of microscopic hexagonal honeycomb cells flashed across the skin of Ouyang Qiangang's throat and vanished in the same breath.
"…!"
Chilho's eyes split wide with shock. His dagger—capable of piercing an inch of steel—had rebounded as though struck by an invisible wall, and at the same moment his wrist bent as though it would snap.
In that brief instant while Chilho stood frozen in astonishment, Ouyang Qiangang finished the motion he had begun. He took a leisurely sip of tea, set the cup down with a soft clink, and only then turned his head to regard Chilho with indifferent eyes.
Chills ran down Chilho's spine. But his hand, true to its long training, was already driving the dagger reflexively toward Ouyang Qiangang's heart.
Swish!
It was the last motion he would ever make. Ouyang Qiangang's right hand moved too fast to leave even an afterimage.
Whiiish—
It was the Gale Whirlwind Palm—yet its power belonged to a different dimension entirely. Through his ceaseless training to raise the density of his qi, a weight beyond all comparison had settled into his palm force: a violence of overwhelming mass, as though it could bring down a mountain.
BOOM!
The first palm struck Chilho's chest faster than his eyes could follow. His sternum caved inward, punching a hole in his chest the size of a man's head. Before he could even scream, the second palm obliterated his skull.
Crack!
Enveloped in a bloody mist, Chilho's headless body toppled backward.
Ouyang Qiangang rose slowly from his seat and gazed down at his own palm with detached eyes.
So this is the power of the Gale Whirlwind Palm with mass added… terrifying.
A single thread of wind stirred, and Hwang Nodae appeared soundlessly at his side. Gazing at Ouyang Qiangang with eyes a tangle of astonishment and awe, he asked:
"Are you hurt anywhere, Young Master?"
"No. I meant only to subdue him and trace the hand behind him… I failed to control my strength."
Ouyang Qiangang looked at the assassin's corpse and continued.
"Nodae, do you know whether this man acted alone, or belongs to an assassin sect?"
Hwang Nodae shook his head.
"You will not find out. True assassins carry nothing that could prove their identity." He examined the corpse briefly before going on. "But the man's footwork and dagger art are those of the extreme pragmatists—assassins who stripped away every superfluity in the sole pursuit of killing. He has plied the trade for at least twenty years."
"If assassins are after me, I must leave the manor tomorrow before any innocent blood is spilled. If I am the target, they will follow me."
At Ouyang Qiangang's words, Hwang Nodae pressed him.
"Even in these circumstances, you will not change your mind about leaving this old man behind and going alone?"
"You saw it yourself, Nodae. I have grown far too strong to be felled by the likes of a mere assassin."
"Hm…"
A bitter smile surfaced on Hwang Nodae's face as he heaved a deep sigh.
"You are every bit as stubborn as the late Madam, Young Master."
Ouyang Qiangang burst into light laughter.
"Haha, well—where else would that blood have gone?"
"Young Master, go in and rest now. This old man will see to the cleanup."
"I leave it to you, Nodae."
Just as Ouyang Qiangang turned to go—
Kkiek—!
Geum Wang, who had only now appeared after playing with Gu-yang Cheong-cheong, shrieked at the sight of the bloodstains and the corpse, and leapt onto Ouyang Qiangang's shoulder. As though protesting 'Why did you do something this dangerous without me!', the monkey yanked at his ear in a fury.
Kkik-kkik!
Ouyang Qiangang chuckled and stroked the creature's head.
"You're the one who's late, Geum Wang—getting angry at me is crossing the line, don't you think? It's over now, so stop sulking."
Grumbling all the while, the monkey accompanied him back to his room.
A troubled expression crept across the Sect Leader's expressionless face. He addressed the masked man prostrate before him.
"Ilho. Chilho is dead?"
"He is."
The Sect Leader furrowed his brow.
"Ouyang Qiangang cannot learn martial arts because of his Nine Yin Severed Meridians. So he could not have killed Chilho… which means he has a guardian."
"Neither the information provided by the client nor our own gathering turned up anything about a guardian warrior."
"Hm…"
Ilho spoke.
"Sect Leader, might I suggest a withdrawal for now? We postpone the hit on Ouyang Qiangang until we have gathered intelligence on his guardian—"
The Sect Leader shook his head.
"We cannot. If I cannot even complete a hit this simple, what face would I have to show the Manor Master? We proceed as planned."
Under the laws of the Blood Sea, no subordinate might dispute a superior's decision. Ilho bowed his head.
"Understood."
"If there is a guardian, we simply separate them."
"How…?"
"We make Ouyang Qiangang send his guardian away—and come walking to us on his own two feet."
As he murmured, the Sect Leader's eyes gleamed with a chilling bloodlust.
The next morning, Ouyang Qiangang opened his door to set out on the road, his well-packed bundle on his back and Geum Wang perched on his shoulder. But even before the door swung wide, he sensed that the air within the manor was different from usual. In place of the morning stillness that should have reigned, the frantic footsteps of servants and a suppressed murmur drifted from afar. He knew at once that something had happened.
Hwang Nodae stood waiting at the door, a bewildered look on his face.
"Nodae, what's going on?"
"I don't know yet. I will find out at once, Young Master."
Before Hwang Nodae could take a step, Du Jin-seong came sprinting toward them, pale as death. His usually immaculate attire was in disarray, and the cloth bound about his head sat crooked.
"Young Master! The youngest Lady vanished in the night!"
His voice brimmed with self-reproach and helpless bewilderment.
Ouyang Qiangang's face hardened in an instant.
"Jin-seong, calm yourself and tell me everything. Cheong-a is missing—what exactly does that mean?"
"A maid who brought the wash water to the Lady's room this morning found her absent. Thinking she had gone to the Madam, she went to the Master's quarters, but she was not there either. Everyone in the manor is searching for her now, but…"
Ouyang Qiangang's and Hwang Nodae's eyes met in the empty air. Both understood at the same moment: Gu-yang Cheong-cheong's disappearance could not be unconnected to last night's assassin.
Ouyang Qiangang clenched his teeth. The nanobots scanned the surrounding hundred meters around the clock, even while he slept. But the Ouyang Clan Manor was vast, and the annex where he stayed lay more than two hundred meters from the main estate. That was why he had failed to detect this commotion.
At that very moment, from the direction of the main gate, a wretched-looking boy came shuffling toward them, flanked by guard warriors.