The Spider's Den Burns
The underground dungeon of Yeomga Manor. Inside the iron bars, two men sat bound. The short, wiry one in his mid-twenties was Yawol; the hard-featured man in his late forties was Ilsa. Not that Yeom Pung, standing over them with murder in his eyes, had any notion of who they were.
"I will ask one last time. Who sent you!"
Yeom Pung's furious voice shook the dungeon to its foundations. Internal energy poured from his hands, the Internal Heavy Water Technique bearing down on Yawol's shoulder.
"Kraaaaagh!"
A scream tore out of Yawol's mouth. Yeom Pung's internal energy wrenched at his meridians, inflicting pain as though his organs were being torn loose from their places.
"Speak, and I will grant you a painless death!"
When Yawol showed no sign of opening his mouth even mid-scream, Yeom Pung rounded on Ilsa with a roar and bore down on his chest with the same technique.
"Ugh... krrrgh!"
Ilsa's whole body convulsed and his clenched lips split, but he too gave no hint of talking. Yeom Pung's furious gaze swung between the two men. The internal energy streaming from his hands grew fiercer still, until the entire dungeon trembled with agonized screams.
"Kraagh! Aaaaargh!"
Yeom Pung subjected them to brutal torture until the sky began to lighten, but neither man said a word. He finally staggered into the reception hall drenched in sweat, where Ouyang Qiangang and Sangguan Wan'er were waiting for him.
"It will not be easy to pry the thief and the blade open. Their lips are sealed tighter than stone."
He had taken to calling Yawol the thief and Ilsa the blade.
"Which is precisely why they were chosen for a secret mission," Ouyang Qiangang said calmly. "Great Hero Yeom, let us try a different approach now."
"A different approach?"
"Loosen the watch."
Sangguan Wan'er asked with a puzzled look, "You mean to give them a chance to escape?"
"That is right. If we cannot force their mouths open, we must make them guide us of their own accord."
Ouyang Qiangang went on with a faint smile. "The dead say nothing, but those who run always leave a trail behind. I intend to use them as bait and flush out the enemy's den."
Dawn was breaking in a dim gray light. Inside the underground dungeon of Yeomga Manor, Yawol's ear twitched almost imperceptibly. The patrol intervals of the guards, once precise as a blade's edge, now carried a gap the length of a single breath. And by the cell door, the jailer who always held his head rigidly upright was nodding up and down. The man was dozing.
Yawol's eyes hardened. For his age he was rich in the ways of the jianghu, and his profession had landed him in deadly peril more than once. His instincts had been honed sharp enough to make grizzled veterans of the martial world weep.
This is not the watch loosening with the dawn. This is a trap.
His instincts screamed it.
But if I do not take this bait, only death remains.
He shook the shoulder of Ilsa, who was moaning beside him, and hissed sharply into his ear.
"Snap out of it! If we miss this chance, there will be no other!"
Yeom Pung's savage torture had left Ilsa's body and mind in tatters, but he had not yet lost consciousness, and focus slowly returned to his clouded eyes.
"I will pick the lock. Keep watch!"
Having said his piece, Yawol drew from his matted hair the slender needle hidden there and slid it into the keyhole, turning it with painstaking care despite his ruined hands. While he worked for his life, Ilsa leaned against the wall, one ear trained on the footsteps of the approaching patrol.
Click. The lock gave way. Supporting one another, Yawol and Ilsa slipped out of the dungeon. Their ragged breathing sounded as loud as thunder in their own ears, and the crunch of a single pebble underfoot was enough to send cold sweat pouring down their spines. Desperately propping each other up, the two reached the foot of Yeomga Manor's high wall. Yawol heaved Ilsa over the top with the last of his strength, then scrambled up after him, and the two figures vanished beyond the wall.
From the window of a three-story pavilion a dozen or so zhang away, with the dungeon entrance in full view, Ouyang Qiangang, Sangguan Wan'er, and Yeom Pung watched them flee.
Akasha, the condition of those two?
The blade is suffering the aftereffects of torture: judgment reduced by 60 percent, impaired spatial orientation, and counter-surveillance perception severely degraded. The thief is in somewhat better shape, but his condition can hardly be called normal either.
Sangguan Wan'er asked, "What will you do now, Young Master?"
"We pursue them and tear out the root," Ouyang Qiangang said, his voice resolute. "I may not be able to wipe out the power behind them in a single stroke, but at the very least I will make certain they never dare attempt this again."
The nanobots' detection range currently reached one hundred meters. Long-range tracking was impossible, which left him no choice but to follow in person. He turned to Yeom Pung.
"Great Hero Yeom, come with me. If they split up, I cannot run down both of them alone."
"I meant to do so even had you not asked," Yeom Pung said with a nod. "I have some confidence in my light-footwork as well."
Once clear of Yeomga Manor, Yawol and Ilsa parted ways about five li out, and Ouyang Qiangang and Yeom Pung watched it happen from some thirty zhang behind.
"Great Hero Yeom, take the thief. I will follow the blade."
"Understood."
The two of them split apart as well, Yeom Pung after Yawol and Ouyang Qiangang after Ilsa. Had Ilsa been in his right mind, he would of course have suspected pursuit, but Yeom Pung's torture had left him too ravaged in body and mind to think straight. As for why Ouyang Qiangang had chosen Ilsa, the man simply seemed to carry more information. It went without saying that an armed blade stood a rung above a common cutpurse.
Employing the Ghost Shadow Step of the Heavenly Void Meteor Divine Art, Ouyang Qiangang kept a steady thirty zhang behind Ilsa. It was a long gap by any measure, but well within the nanobots' detection range, so there was no fear of losing him.
An hour later, Ilsa arrived at a dilapidated manor on the outskirts of the Imperial Capital. A plaque above its gate read Blue Pine Garden, but the estate's true face was the Imperial Capital branch of Spider Blood, Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor's web of informants. Its walls stood high enough to hide everything within, and to the casual eye it might have passed for a nobleman's country villa. Its secrecy was kept so airtight that even Gold Mountain Tower and Myriad Gold Mountain Manor had never caught wind of it.
Ouyang Qiangang concealed himself in the shadow of Blue Pine Garden's wall.
Initiating a structural scan of the manor interior. Total personnel confirmed: eighteen. Sixteen martial artists and four civilians. The individual in the study of the inner residence appears to be their leader.
Akasha's real-time analysis flowed into Ouyang Qiangang's mind.
In the secret chamber lodged in the deepest reaches of Blue Pine Garden, Branch Head Sa An's face was pale to the point of bloodlessness. Before him stood his trusted lieutenant Jeokgwi, head bowed, his expression frozen stiff. The air in the chamber had sunk heavy and still.
In a single night they had lost thirty ronin, Yawol of the Shadowless Path, and even the Shadow Fourteen, the elite of the elite. Nearly every card the Imperial Capital branch of Spider Blood could play had vanished from the table, and every bit of that loss had been dealt by a single man of unknown identity: Hahu Gang.
Sa An parted his parched lips.
"You say Yawol and Ilsa are locked in Yeomga Manor's underground dungeon."
"Yes, Branch Head. That is what I have confirmed."
"Still alive, then..."
Sa An's eyes thinned and flickered. A living prisoner could become a far greater calamity than a dead man. There was no telling what secrets might slip from their lips, or what chain reaction they might set loose.
Just then, frantic pounding rattled the sealed chamber door, followed by a warrior's flustered voice.
"B-Branch Head! Disaster!"
"Stop your squawking! What is it?"
Sa An, mid-bellow with a scowl on his face, went white at the warrior's next words.
"Ilsa... Ilsa has just returned through the front gate!"
"What!"
Sa An and Jeokgwi were aghast in the same breath. Jeokgwi bolted into the courtyard, where Ilsa swayed between the shoulders of supporting warriors. It was a pitiful sight.
"Ilsa! Stay with me! What happened?"
"I barely... escaped... Their watch... had grown careless, and I slipped through..."
With those last words, Ilsa sagged into Jeokgwi's arms and lost consciousness. Sa An, who had hurried out after him, swallowed dryly at Ilsa's words and murmured:
"...Escaped, you say?"
Gritting his teeth, he spoke to Jeokgwi.
"You believe that monster simply let Ilsa walk away? It is a trap. Ilsa is bait, set to snare us!"
"What? What do you—"
The very moment Jeokgwi moved to ask, a voice cold as ice drifted over from the wall.
"Impressive situational awareness."
Sa An's and Jeokgwi's faces froze in horror, as though they had seen a ghost. Jeokgwi turned, saw the figure walking out of the wall's shadow, and a groan spilled from his lips.
"Hahu Gang..."
"So you know me. Then you know resistance is pointless as well."
Jeokgwi hurled himself at Hahu Gang, shouting to the sixteen warriors:
"Stop him!"
At the same instant, Sa An darted into the secret chamber and barred the door. Their movements, swift and orderly as if measured with a ruler, made clear they had drilled for exactly this scenario long ago.
"Futile!"
Ouyang Qiangang sneered at the onrushing warriors. They were fast, but far too slow for him. In an instant, a storm broke from both his hands: the Gale Cyclone Palms.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
"Aaaaargh!"
Screams that seemed to claw at the ninth heaven burst forth one after another. Bodies with shattered skulls and crushed limbs flew in every direction, slamming into walls and buildings. In the span of two or three blinks, the only man still standing was Jeokgwi.
All sixteen warriors were dead. Granted, as an outfit devoted to intelligence it fielded only three or four first-rate martial artists, the rest all second-rate, but even so, annihilation in the space of an instant was beyond anything he had imagined.
"A monster..."
Jeokgwi murmured, his face awash in terror. Ouyang Qiangang's index finger darted out like lightning and struck Jeokgwi's numbing point.
"Ugh!"
His numbing point sealed, Jeokgwi dropped like a felled log.
Thud—
Doctor, the man who appears to be their leader is incinerating documents inside the secret chamber.
Ouyang Qiangang hurled himself at the secret chamber like a bolt of lightning, unleashing the Explosive Thunder Flame King Fist as he flew.
Crash!
The iron door, a good four inches thick, buckled inward at its center from that single blow and toppled backward whole.
Boom!
Inside, the chamber was already awash in flame.
Fwoooosh—
And in the very heart of the blaze, Sa An shrieked at him, his face steeped in despair and madness.
"Too late, Hahu Gang! There is nothing left for you to find!"
Ouyang Qiangang lunged to seal Sa An's numbing point, but it was already too late. Black blood seeping from his seven orifices, Sa An pitched forward where he sat.
Thud—
He was dead before his body ever touched the floor. He had swallowed a poison so virulent that not even Ouyang Qiangang, heir to the Divine Hand Hua Tuo's healing arts, could have pulled him back.
Ouyang Qiangang quelled the flames with the Pure Yin qi of the Transcendent Formless Divine Art. But the papers had evidently been treated with oil, and the vital documents concerning Sangguan Wan'er had already mostly crumbled to ash.
He emerged from the chamber clutching a few unburned scraps, and his face went blank. Jeokgwi, whose numbing point he had sealed, had turned black and blue from head to toe. Not even the sound of breathing remained.
He was dead.
It appears he had a poison implanted within his body, designed to activate when he was physically incapacitated, such as having his numbing point sealed by an enemy.
Hm... is suicide fashionable among the people of this era? I really ought to study up on poisons as well.
Ouyang Qiangang looked down at a single scrap the flames had failed to consume. On it, two characters stood out vividly, brushed in ink.
Spider.