Prepared, But...
He had wanted a few more precautions in place—just to be safe—but the Karma Mission's time limit would not let him keep preparing forever.
Before they left the inn, Seo Joo-cheon laid out the operation for the other two.
"So you're saying there's a scramble for a heavenly elixir happening in Weinan right now?"
Ham Cheon-yeong had already sensed that something was off, but an elixir contest had never once crossed his mind.
"That's right. And not just any elixir—Gongcheong Seokyu. Stalactite Milk."
Kang Chu-mi, who had been listening, cut in.
"But Big Brother, where did you even hear about this?"
Seo Joo-cheon offered a faint smile.
Kang Chu-mi always has that unnecessarily sharp streak, doesn't she.
He had no choice but to fall back on the cover story he had prepared.
"You've seen it yourself—martial artists have been pouring into this place all of a sudden. It felt wrong, so I asked around."
"When?"
They had been glued together ever since arriving at the Namcheon Inn. When, exactly, was Big Brother supposed to have found time to go off on his own?
Then, mid-sentence, something seemed to click, and Kang Chu-mi murmured,
"Don't tell me you mean the day you said you were going to a pleasure house? You heard it there?"
She knew that whenever Po Un came into a town, he would steal a little time for a pleasure house, so if Big Brother said he was stepping out alone for a bit, she never even bothered to answer. Po Un had always preferred the flower houses as his way of easing the long ache of a wanderer's life.
Seo Joo-cheon pushed aside the memories of Po Un that rose unbidden and smiled, a little bitterly. It was hardly difficult to understand. In this age, if not a pleasure house, where else was a man supposed to unburden himself? Po Un had been no exception, and Kang Chu-mi had never once scolded him for it.
Well. It isn't as if Po Un were some monk.
This was an era in which the custom of three wives and four concubines applied in the broadest possible sense. Once Kang Chu-mi had reasoned it out for herself, the rest of the explanation came easily.
"We're the only ones in the dark. Every martial artist gathered in Weinan already knows."
"That's our Big Brother for you."
Kang Chu-mi went on, admiration plain in her voice.
"So because the three of us alone wouldn't have much chance of pulling off a rescue, you decided to drag the other martial artists into it."
"Exactly. We're not the ones who are going to fight Bulsama."
"Hohoho, of course. The only reason our Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes have survived in the martial world this long is Big Brother's clever little schemes."
Kang Chu-mi laughed, long and delighted. She was already slapping their newly earned epithet onto every sentence; she must have taken to it more than a little.
Seo Joo-cheon had no intention of fighting Bulsama, the Undying Demon. The Jangdokhwe-go was insurance, nothing more—a precaution against the worst. If they could extract the Black-Eyed Leopard Saber without trouble, there would be no need to use the fake Gongcheong Seokyu at all. But he knew that to face Bulsama unprepared was to walk straight into death, and so he meant to stack every advantage he could. This was no longer the world of a novel he was writing. It was real. To stay alive, he would do whatever it took.
"Then are the preparations finished?"
At Ham Cheon-yeong's question, Seo Joo-cheon shook his head.
"One last thing. Simple—but important."
He called for the waiter. When the man came over, Seo Joo-cheon drew a generous handful of coins from his pouch and pressed them into the waiter's palm.
"Spread a rumor for me. Say that someone carrying a heavenly elixir is fleeing toward the Suo River."
"Just that? That's all I need to put around?"
"That's all. Tell them you overheard martial artists talking about it here at the inn."
"Understood."
The waiter left the inn at once.
"But will they really come to the Suo River?"
"They will. There'll be more who believe it and come running than who doubt it and stay away."
"True enough. Dangle a secret manual or an elixir in front of them and martial artists will throw themselves into the fire like moths."
Ham Cheon-yeong rubbed his chin. Had he heard the rumor himself, he would have gone to the Suo River too.
Seo Joo-cheon, Ham Cheon-yeong, and Kang Chu-mi slipped out through the inn's alley and unfurled their qinggong, racing toward the Suo River.
When they arrived, the stretches that had once stood thick with silver grass were nothing but blackened ash, a bleak and ugly sight. Standing on the riverbank again, Seo Joo-cheon felt a faint weakness in his knees. He had made his preparations, yes—but Bulsama was so formidable an enemy that the thought of facing him a second time sat heavy and dark in his chest.
"Let's find the Black-Eyed Leopard Saber. He'll be nearby, watching, without a doubt."
"Big Brother, wouldn't it be better to wait near the boat?"
"Do you know his face?"
Ham Cheon-yeong answered Seo Joo-cheon's question.
"We don't. But isn't he famous for those black eyes of his? Among the martial artists gathering here, wouldn't the one with the darkest face be the Black-Eyed Leopard Saber?"
"That's what everyone thinks. In truth, he's a master of disguise. Those black eyes likely aren't even his real face."
"Is that so?"
Kang Chu-mi slipped into the opening.
"Big Brother, how do you know a thing like that when even we have never heard it? That's the sort of secret only an intelligence chief of the Hao Clan or the Beggars' Sect would be privy to."
"She's right. How do you know something like that?"
Ham Cheon-yeong chimed in. They were not interrogating him. They were asking because they were in awe of him—because they could not fathom how Big Brother came to know such secrets.
"Do you think I talk to people because I have nothing better to do? I gather scraps of idle information and draw my conclusions from them. That's how secrets usually come apart. The Hao Clan and the Beggars' Sect didn't start out knowing he was a master of disguise either. They pieced it together while tracing his movements."
It was a vague, all-purpose dodge, but the two of them accepted it without a flicker of doubt.
"That's our Big Brother. If you'd been born into the Orthodox faction instead of the Unorthodox, you'd have a seat in the Orthodox Alliance by now."
"That's true. He's too good a man to be wasted among the Unorthodox."
Listening to them, Seo Joo-cheon smiled. He knew perfectly well that they thought this way because their affection for Po Un ran so deep.
"I'm stumbling around even among the Unorthodox. Imagine how much worse it would be on the other side."
"And seeing him know his place like that only makes it more of a shame, doesn't it?"
Kang Chu-mi said it with a laugh, glancing at Ham Cheon-yeong, who checked Big Brother's expression and then nodded. Seo Joo-cheon knew well enough that when his younger siblings teased him, it was only their way of bleeding off the tension.
"The truth is, we've only just earned the name Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes—and a single misstep could send us plunging into the abyss. Origin doesn't matter. The arrogant and the proud always fall. So none of you are ever to become that kind of martial artist."
"Hahaha. As if you'd sit still and watch if we ever started getting arrogant, Big Brother."
Ham Cheon-yeong's tone had warmed into something more familiar, and Seo Joo-cheon smiled. Even to his own eyes, these two could not have been further from vanity or pride.
"Big Brother, if the Black-Eyed Leopard Saber is a master of disguise, how are we supposed to find him? Like Second Brother said, if we wait near the boat, anyone heading that way could be taken for him first."
"That's possible, of course. But he won't just walk onto Bulsama's boat either. He'll scout first."
They talked through one scenario after another as they went, and before long the party had reached the vicinity of the pier.
Sure enough, the martial artists were numerous enough to catch the eye. The Suo River was no place for pleasure boating, nor a spot anyone would visit to savor the scenery. That so many fighters had gathered here was proof the waiter had spread the rumor well.
Seo Joo-cheon meant to run a Character Search on every martial artist along the riverbank, one by one, and winnow out the Black-Eyed Leopard Saber. No matter how thorough the disguise, a Character Search would lay bare a person's true nature. It would take time, nothing more. He was confident he would find the man soon enough.
He started with the fighters loitering around the bank. None of them stood out. They were all small fry, drawn by the hope of snatching an easy profit—a motley crowd ranging from Third-Rate to Second-Rate, and not a single one worth Seo Joo-cheon's attention.
Strange. If the rumor has spread, they ought to be flooding toward the Suo River. So why is it nothing but minnows? Where are the big fish?
Then he caught sight of one particular group, and a dry laugh escaped him.
Not that there are no big fish. The problem is, it's a big fish I know all too well.
Dang Seol-yong and her two escort guards were approaching along the riverbank. She, too, made no move to close in on Bulsama's boat. She clearly understood that this was an enemy beyond her measure. Spotting the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes from a distance, she tipped her head in a small nod.
She'll assume I came because I heard the rumor, same as everyone else.
Dang Seol-yong sat down at an outdoor table in front of a teahouse near the pier and swept her gaze across the surroundings.
She's looking for the Black-Eyed Leopard Saber too. She knows he's skilled at disguise. Otherwise there would have been no reason to sit there so calmly, watching every martial artist who passed. Thus far, she was the only fighter worth a second look.
Then Seo Joo-cheon's gaze locked onto a martial artist just now approaching the riverbank.
"That one!"
He did not even need a Character Search. The face alone was enough. The man looked so exactly like Editor Hong Seok-hun—hair bound up, dressed in martial robes—that the resemblance was uncanny.
I ground my teeth thinking of that editor when I made this character. I never imagined the face would be projected onto him exactly as I'd pictured it.
A middle-aged man, approaching at an unhurried pace. Seo Joo-cheon sharpened his eyes and ran a Character Search.
Reading the man's history, Seo Joo-cheon let out a quiet snicker.
Exactly as I wrote him.
The "saber-fish" in the epithet meant the cutlassfish—a jab at Hong Seok-hun's fondness for silvery-gray suits, which Seo Joo-cheon had seized on when he coined the name Heinous Saber Fiend. The martial robes were gray. The hair was gray. The epithet suited him with an almost sly precision. He carried himself with the bearing of a First-Rate saber master, and he had grown into a man who fit the title of one of the Three Great Evil Ones—so vicious that even among the Unorthodox, who made a business of wickedness, he was known as a true piece of work.
I didn't expect to see him here. He's fated to die a hideous death at the protagonist's hands later on, so there's no need for me to deal with him myself.
To be honest, it was more accurate to say that Seo Joo-cheon's current strength could not handle the Heinous Saber Fiend at all.
Then his eyes met Hong Seok-hun's. He had been staring so intently that Hong Seok-hun had sensed the weight of his presence. The man came toward him, slow and unhurried. A long saber, long enough to drag along the ground, swayed at his waist in time with his stride.
"Have we met? You look familiar, somehow."
"I couldn't say. This is the first time."
Hong Seok-hun nodded at Seo Joo-cheon's reply—and a thin, unpleasant smile crept across his face.
"Well, of course. As if I would ever have mixed with the likes of the Shaanxi Four Evils."
A provocation, delivered without a shred of subtlety. Seo Joo-cheon only gave a short laugh.
"Might I ask your distinguished name?"
He asked as if he did not already know. Hong Seok-hun answered with a look of swelling self-satisfaction.
"They call me the Heinous Saber Fiend. Some even go around saying I'm one of the Three Great Evils of the martial world."
Ham Cheon-yeong and Kang Chu-mi, already in foul tempers, had their faces twist at his words. The Three Great Evils were figures the jianghu preferred to avoid. They were the sort who would do anything to win, and their inner power and martial arts were so formidable that even Peak masters steered clear of them. Their dispositions were venomous in the extreme.
"And you know who we are?"
At Seo Joo-cheon's question, Hong Seok-hun snorted.
"The name I've been hearing most since I set foot in this region is the Shaanxi Four Evils. Seems you wagged your tails at the Mount Hua Sect and picked up a little reputation."
To say such a thing to their faces took a special kind of nerve.
Did I really write him this insufferable?
He had created the character himself, and still the words sent irritation surging up his throat. Kang Chu-mi, it seemed, felt it even more keenly.
"I beg your pardon? You might want to watch that mouth."
Her eyes blazed as she spoke.
"What? Don't like it? Then come at me."
Hong Seok-hun looked her over with an easy, leisurely expression.
"This bastard—!"
Kang Chu-mi's fists clenched; she looked ready to take the bait. Even among the Unorthodox, she had never seen a provocation delivered quite like this. They say rank makes the thug—and in the martial world, it is the masters who play the gangster. The Heinous Saber Fiend clearly ranked the Shaanxi Four Evils far beneath him, and it showed. Even the usually silent Ham Cheon-yeong had shifted his stance, ready to draw his saber at a moment's notice.
With things pushed this far, Seo Joo-cheon had no choice but to brace for a clash. He readied himself to unleash the Time Dilation Authority at once.
That was when it happened.
"A Plum Blossom Swordsman is dying!"
A shout from the undergrowth. At those words, the Heinous Saber Fiend flicked a glance at Seo Joo-cheon—and then his body shot toward the brush.
Seo Joo-cheon's brow furrowed at the sudden turn. The martial artists who had gathered along the riverbank began to pour toward the sound.