The Impostors' End
Jang Hyeon-nam, Sang Ryo, and Jeong Geum-sik had grown restless with waiting. The hour was still early, but they had each poured a cup all the same, taking Jeong Geum-sik up on his suggestion that they share a farewell drink before the time of parting arrived.
"Hero Sang, have you decided to join the Jang Clan for good?"
Sang Ryo nodded.
"I've spent my whole life wandering the jianghu, living as I pleased. As you well know, roaming the martial world means picking up quarrels of one kind or another, and grudges pile up whether you want them or not. Living that way, I ended up saddled with the title Nimble Fast Blade and the stigma of being an Unorthodox man. It was almost funny. Even though my sect has since been destroyed, I was once a disciple of a school that belonged to the Nine Great Sects. The moment people started calling me Unorthodox, my hands grew crueler, and before I knew it I really had become one. Then I passed thirty, and I started thinking about what chivalry actually meant. The instant I resolved to live as a true hero, I met Young Hero Jang."
A few rounds of wine had loosened Sang Ryo's tongue, which had seemed as though it might never open. Jeong Geum-sik rubbed his chin and listened closely.
From everything he had observed, Sang Ryo was a martial artist who strove to preserve a warrior's dignity. It was a pity that men like him ended up labeled Unorthodox in this martial world.
"When a man walks the path his will points toward, others can't help but want to follow."
"That's exactly right. Young Hero Jang may be younger than I am, but the righteousness and chivalrous heart he carries are unlike anything I've ever seen. That's why I mean to watch how far he goes."
Hearing this, Jang Hyeon-nam rose and clasped his fists in a formal salute.
"Let me say it once more. I will regard Hero Sang as the teacher who restored me to my original resolve."
"Hahaha. That wasn't what I meant."
"No. Wherever my path leads, Hero Sang will walk beside it. I give you my word."
Sang Ryo and Jang Hyeon-nam exchanged a look thick with the camaraderie of sworn comrades. Jeong Geum-sik, though he himself hailed from the Demon Ice Palace, found the sight of those two genuinely pleasing. Men who still carried the vanished romance of the jianghu, perhaps. It was a feeling any martial artist could share, regardless of origin.
Good people gather around good people. That's just how it is.
The thought made him suddenly feel lonely, and he was just tossing back another cup when the inn door burst open and a group strode in.
Three men and one woman. Judging by their dress and bearing, they were Unorthodox or underworld fighters. The four of them swept their eyes around the inn and grinned.
"Nice and quiet. I like it."
What pleased them was the apparent absence of anyone who looked like a real expert. Sang Ryo and Jeong Geum-sik gave them a moment's pause, but they dismissed the two as bodyguards trailing some rich young master. Jang Hyeon-nam had a naturally aristocratic air about him, and the rather fine cloth of his clothes only reinforced the impression.
The waiter approached them.
"Welcome, honored guests. This way, if you please."
Once the four of them had taken their seats, the waiter went on.
"Will you be dining?"
"We came here to eat. You think we came to chase skirts?"
The burly one snapped it so harshly that the waiter shrank into his collar.
"And what shall I bring you?"
"The most expensive food and wine this inn has. A full spread. Don't be stingy."
The waiter could not quite hide his dismay. Nothing about these four suggested they could afford expensive food and wine. What they had just ordered ran to a tael or two of silver at the very least. At any inn, the finest dishes and the finest liquor cost more than most people could imagine—rare ingredients made for rare prices.
The waiter tried to put it delicately.
"Would an advance payment be possible?"
"What? Advance payment? This brat's got some nerve."
The mountain of a man bristled at once.
"Since when do you pay up front just to eat at an inn?"
"Lately there have been a great many who dine and vanish without paying, so a number of establishments have taken up the practice."
The waiter answered with a placating smile, hoping they would understand.
"This son of a bitch—you know who we are? You got a death wish?"
The one-armed man slammed his sword into the tabletop with a sharp crack. His empty sleeve flared as he leaned into the threat, and a fairly murderous aura rolled off him.
"Aigoo! Please, warrior, calm yourself! That wasn't what I meant at all."
"Look at this bastard. You don't even know who we are?"
The one-armed man was offering him one more chance, and the waiter took a slow, careful look. Three years of waiting tables had taught him how to read a room. He had enough experience to match rumors together and roughly identify a famous martial artist.
One-armed. The woman uses a whip. One of them is built like a bear and carries a huge saber. The last one looks like a courtesan's boy.
He turned it over, and the name that had been on everyone's lips of late rose to the surface.
"Ah! The elders of the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes! Aigoo, forgive me for not recognizing you!"
The waiter folded at the waist as though the honor of it were almost too much—and still could not quite shake the thought that these people looked like common riffraff, nothing like the rumors.
They say that even though they're Unorthodox, they conduct themselves like chivalrous heroes of the great Orthodox sects.
He had never once seen a true hero who bullied or threatened the weak. Heroes did not torment those beneath them. But the faces in front of him were what they were, so he laid the flattery on thick and loud.
"Muhahahaha!"
The burly one threw his head back and roared with laughter.
"Now you know how to recognize people. We are the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes!"
At that, every soul in the inn turned to look. Some gazes shone with admiration. Others were simply awed.
Watching them, Jeong Geum-sik let out a sigh.
"Heavens. What kind of karma are those fools courting? I hate to think what would happen if Hero Po saw this."
He had muttered it to himself, but Sang Ryo answered anyway.
"I'll bet my finger they die screaming with daggers in them from Pyeon Bi-yeo and Young Lady Kang."
"Oh? Is that so? Then I'll wager my finger that the pretty one's skull gets split by Hero Ham's Peacock Snake Saber."
Jang Hyeon-nam was frowning at the four of them.
"No. I'll bet my arm that I'm the one who thrashes them."
"Hm?"
The more those impostors carried on, the more his sworn brother's reputation would suffer. That much was obvious.
The Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes are popular beyond belief. How famous do you have to be before people start impersonating you? This won't do. I'll have to step in and punish them myself.
Steeling himself, Jang Hyeon-nam rose.
"You lot claim to be the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes?"
At that moment the inn door flew open as though it might come off its hinges, and a man stepped through. To have heard what was said inside from out in the street meant excellent hearing—and no small amount of inner force.
Jang Hyeon-nam had been about to speak with a sneer. Then he saw the man coming in, and he simply stared, stunned. This was someone who should not have been here at all.
"How?"
He murmured it as he watched the newcomer walk toward the fake Shaanxi Four. Jeong Geum-sik, eyeing the murderous aura pouring off the man, turned to Sang Ryo.
"Who is that?"
It was their first meeting; Jeong Geum-sik did not know the face.
Sang Ryo answered with a low hum.
"The Heinous Saber Fiend, Hong Seok-hun."
"Ah. The Heinous Saber Fiend."
Jeong Geum-sik himself carried the title of one of the Three Great Eccentrics of the martial world, so he had taken an interest in the Three Great Evils for a long time.
"But wasn't he supposed to have taken the Gongcheong Seokyu and fled to Tibet?"
He was going by the rumors.
"He was. The fact that he's standing here now suggests he took the elixir and found his confidence."
From the instant he crossed the threshold, the Heinous Saber Fiend's presence had been in a class of its own—a pressure like a solid wall.
"He definitely took a spiritual elixir. He wasn't like this when I saw him at Namcheon Inn."
Which meant the Heinous Saber Fiend had, without meaning to, just announced to the world that the elixir he received at Namcheon Inn had been genuine Gongcheong Seokyu. He could deny it all he liked. From the moment he had taken the real thing from Pyo Byeong-jik and swallowed it, it had become the truth. Unfair or not, there was no changing it now.
The Heinous Saber Fiend closed in and bore down on them. The one-armed man shot back.
"Where does a mayfly get off glaring at the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes?"
Hong Seok-hun looked at him and grinned.
"One arm missing. So you must be the third of the Shaanxi Four."
"That's right! I am the One-Armed Island Emperor, Dokgo Ho-in!"
"Unbelievable. Truly. The moment you impersonated the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes, you gave up on living. And you dare wear their names in front of me?"
"Who the hell are you? You dare insult us?"
The one who looked like a courtesan's boy barked it at him.
"You don't recognize me? You don't know who I am? The Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes?"
"We meet dozens of martial artists a day. Why would we remember a nobody like you?"
"You've got to be kidding me. I'm the Heinous Saber Fiend—the one you gave a spiritual elixir to. That ring a bell?"
"The—the Heinous Saber Fiend?"
Even they had heard the story: the Heinous Saber Fiend who had seized an elixir from the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes at Namcheon Inn and fled.
"What's the Heinous Saber Fiend doing here? Ah—ahahahaha!"
The pretty-boy's face went white for an instant. Then he burst into a great, rolling laugh.
"Ahahahaha! Now this one's a real piece of work. Of all the people to impersonate, you pick the Heinous Saber Fiend? The Heinous Saber Fiend was so terrified of us he ran all the way to Tibet. How could a man like that show his face here?"
Unfortunately for him, the pretty-boy had decided that the Heinous Saber Fiend was a fake, just like they were.
"Namcheon Inn must be even more famous than I thought, if someone's out here impersonating the Heinous Saber Fiend of all people."
The one-armed man muttered it, and the woman—amply endowed, sensual to the point of overflowing—picked it up.
"At this rate, someone will start impersonating the Sword Hero Dragon, Jang Hyeon-nam, next."
At her words, the one-armed man drew the sword he had been leaning against the table and pointed it toward Jang Hyeon-nam.
"Come to think of it—look over there. There's a fellow who looks a lot like the Sword Hero Dragon. Maybe he came in here to impersonate him too. We've run into a few who tried that. We taught them a lesson every time."
That much, at least, was true. In the martial world as it stood, the bloodbath at Namcheon Inn was famous. No small number of warriors had seen it with their own eyes and heard it with their own ears, and the rumors they spread had run the length of the jianghu. In the telling, the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes had been reborn as heroes of the Unorthodox path. It was on the strength of those rumors that the Jangan Sect and the Yeosan Sect had tried so hard to recruit them. In the Yeosan Sect's case, they even had the testimony of the White Salt Blade, Jeo Pung, who had lived through the incident himself. They had not gone after the Shaanxi Four because they had nothing better to do. The rumors had grown so enormous that people had begun to whisper the four were hidden Unorthodox masters concealing their true strength.
The Heinous Saber Fiend glanced at Jang Hyeon-nam and gave a thin smile.
"Hey, fake Sword Hero Dragon. How's that sit with you?"
Jang Hyeon-nam had been so abruptly recast as a fake Jang Hyeon-nam that he could not even find a reply. Sang Ryo clicked his tongue.
"They're done for now."
The only person who might have saved those four was Jang Hyeon-nam. They had just branded him a fake. There was no way out left for them.
"This lord has business to attend to. I can't play along with your little act any longer."
The Heinous Saber Fiend drew his saber and swung it without a shred of warning.
"What the—you bastard!"
The bear of a man caught the sudden cut on his own blade.
A ringing clash. Then a crash of wood.
The burly one went flying, taking chair and table down with him. He lurched back to his feet with his saber still in hand—but the hand that held it was shaking.
"Well now. So you can at least stop a single strike. I suppose you'd need that much if you were going to go around impersonating the Shaanxi Four."
The Heinous Saber Fiend looked the four of them over with something like surprise. Only then did the fake Shaanxi Four understand: he was the snake, and they were the frogs. The burly one had been the strongest of the four. If even he could not stop a casual swing from the Heinous Saber Fiend and had been sent sprawling, the show was over.
"Run!"
The pretty-boy shouted it, and all four of them threw themselves toward the windows and the door. But the only thing that left the floor was their bodies. Their heads dropped where they stood with a dull thud. In a single instant, the Heinous Saber Fiend had taken all four necks.
"Aagh!"
"Murder!"
The guests who had been watching the fight in a daze saw heads part from bodies and fled the inn in abject terror. Jang Hyeon-nam's mouth twitched at the cruelty of it. They had impersonated the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes, but they had not actually harmed anyone. He did not think they needed to die for it. The Heinous Saber Fiend, however, nursed a grudge against Seo Joo-cheon—and the mere act of wearing that name in his presence had been enough. He had cut them down in a single stroke.
Looking satisfied, the Heinous Saber Fiend wiped the blood from his saber on the dead men's clothes. He ran his palm along the cleaned blade and turned his head toward Jang Hyeon-nam.
"There's another one here who needs to die."
Jeong Geum-sik spoke toward him.
"Just go. Keep swinging that blade at whoever you please and you might be the one who dies."
He cocked his head at the Heinous Saber Fiend, who was coming toward their table.
"Never seen you before. Give me a name. I'll even put up a gravestone."
The Heinous Saber Fiend said it with a pleasant smile. Jeong Geum-sik snorted.
"The world's full of morons. Morons only figure out what they did wrong once they're dead. Name's Jeong Rang."
"Never heard of it. Some bumpkin from the mountains?"
Jeong Geum-sik shrugged.
"If you want to call it the mountains, sure."
The Demon Ice Palace sat on Mount Xiaowutai, after all.
The Heinous Saber Fiend looked at him.
"Want to come at me all at once? One at a time? Makes no difference to me."
The arrogance of it was so complete that Jeong Geum-sik burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha! Would you listen to that swagger. I'll take you on."
Jeong Geum-sik stood. Jang Hyeon-nam started to rise with him, but Sang Ryo stopped him.
"Let's watch. Hero Jeong is no ordinary martial artist."
Sang Ryo had already sensed that Jeong Geum-sik was a hidden master concealing his identity.
"Draw your weapon."
Jeong Geum-sik answered the Heinous Saber Fiend without moving toward a blade.
"For the likes of you, two hands will be plenty."
With those words the two of them collided, and a sudden, violent gale tore through the inn.