A Big Catch
“Hah… hah…”
“Hyung. Take a break now.”
Panseok set down his club, grabbed a water bucket from the corner, and dumped it over himself.
Splash!
The soaked clothes clung to his body, sweat and water together, and every hard-earned muscle stood out in sharp relief. Looking at him, Ja Gangcheon let out a pure, unguarded note of admiration.
“No internal energy at all, and he beat people for half a shichen straight.”
Cheongu was just as stunned.
“At that level he might as well be a bear. What would he have become if he’d learned martial arts from childhood?”
“An absolute master.”
His natural gifts were almost painful to waste.
“So what are we doing with all these people?”
Eighty-three men lay groaning across the courtyard.
“We lock them up until the Ghost-Faced Twin Killers arrive.”
Ja Gangcheon called to Panseok, who had just cooled himself with the cold water.
“Panseok hyung. Go fetch the Haeryong Sect people now.”
“Uh, Hyungnim…”
Unlike before, Panseok approached with an awkward shuffle and asked,
“What… are you going to do with our brothers?”
He glanced at the groaning men and let the sentence trail off.
“The Haeryong Sect isn’t like those bastards. They took me in when I had nowhere else to go, and…”
“What, you’re saying they’re a virtuous black society?”
“Virtuous… no, they’re not.”
“Just go and bring them. I already know what I’m going to do.”
“Really? I’ll be right back!”
At that answer, Panseok’s face brightened and he bolted out.
Half an hour later, So Yeondok, master of the Haeryong Sect, stood alone before Ja Gangcheon.
“Why did you come alone?”
“Whatever this is, I will take responsibility.”
“Responsibility for what?”
“Leave my brothers alone. Whatever you order, I will do it myself.”
“Mister. Have you been drinking?”
“Yes. I drank all night. I have no face left to show my brothers, and my pride was already in shreds, so I had a few. If you tell me to bark, I’ll bark. If you tell me to crawl between your legs, I’ll crawl. Just leave my brothers out of it!”
So Yeondok dropped into a sudden bow.
“I guess I really can’t understand black societies. I have no idea why you’re acting like this.”
Nothing in his father’s stories had prepared him for a situation like this. In the end, Ja Gangcheon simply gave the order.
“Tie every person here and lock them in a warehouse near the harbor. Not one of them is allowed to escape.”
So Yeondok was a sharp man. He had more questions, but he squeezed his eyes shut and obeyed. Soon the Haeryong Sect members who had been hiding nearby appeared, and within a single shichen the building fell quiet.
Half a shichen later, at a seafood warehouse near Jinhae Harbor.
A group arrived at the reeking place.
“You’re finally here?”
They were the remnants of Uirim Hall—mostly men from the black market who had stormed the warehouse the moment they heard their Hall Master had been captured.
Waiting for them, however, was more than just their master.
Crack! Crunch!
They ended up in the exact same state. The Haeryong Sect carefully bound them one by one, and every last member of Uirim Hall was taken.
“So the tribute day is three days from now, is that right?”
“Those people hate late tribute more than anything. They will definitely come looking for you!”
The Hall Master still seethed with venom.
“I don’t get it.”
Ja Gangcheon was genuinely curious.
“What exactly do you have to be bitter about?”
No matter how he looked at it, Uirim Hall had no right to feel wronged.
“Just wait a little longer! I’ll tear that mouth of yours apart first!”
“You’re just rotten inside, aren’t you.”
Another question rose across Ja Gangcheon’s face.
“Why should you even be alive?”
He truly could not understand it.
This was a man who would torment others for as long as he drew breath. The more power he gained, the more people would suffer.
“So this is what real evil looks like.”
Ja Gangcheon understood that now.
The moment Ja Gangcheon left the warehouse, the Haeryong Sect master fell in step behind him.
“Great Hero.”
“Great Hero?”
“H-Hyungnim?”
“Mister. I’m fifteen.”
So Yeondok decided to drop the titles altogether.
“What do you intend to do from here? This is no bluff—if the tribute is late, the Ghost-Faced Twin Killers will absolutely appear.”
“That’s the point.”
“What? Then you mean to face them?”
“I’ll handle that myself. Mister, prepare a fishing rod and that little boat over there.”
Ja Gangcheon left those words behind and walked away, but the Haeryong Sect master remained deeply unsettled.
Should I pull out while I still can?
Honestly, he had never come this far by choice. But he had already gone too far to turn back.
They had imprisoned Uirim Hall and beaten them bloody.
Now all I can do is trust him and go along.
There was no other choice left.
The next morning.
Everyone who knew Ja Gangcheon felt their insides burning.
“Cheongu hyungnim. Is this really all right?”
“Just trust him.”
Even Cheongu, who was telling him to trust, was just as uneasy.
What they were staring at was the sea beyond Jinhae Harbor—an outer stretch the trading ships never used. A small boat drifted there at its leisure.
It was the kind of pleasure craft built for boat parties at a brothel, heavy with ornate decoration. Right now Ja Gangcheon sat alone in it, lazily dangling a fishing rod.
“Whoa! I got one!”
His voice rang so loud it carried clearly to Cheongu’s ears on the docks.
“Hyung. Wave.”
“Ah! Yes!”
Cheongu and Panseok forced smiles and answered Ja Gangcheon’s gaze.
One day. Two days.
Ja Gangcheon remained wholly absorbed in his boat outing.
Then, on the evening of the third day.
Two men appeared at the harbor looking exactly like a pair of paintings laid one atop the other.
The Ghost-Faced Twin Killers!
The first to recognize them was So Yeondok of the Haeryong Sect—no surprise, since he had been keeping watch at the docks.
They really came!
Corpse-gray skin, lips red as if smeared with blood, eyes sunken into deep shadows—the Ghost-Faced Twin Killers fixed their gaze on a single point.
The boat where Ja Gangcheon sat.
They already know everything.
He hadn’t bothered to hide much, so of course they had noticed. The only question was whether they would free their subordinates in the warehouse first, or attack Ja Gangcheon first.
But the Ghost-Faced Twin Killers did not so much as glance toward the warehouse where their men were locked away.
They stared coldly across the water, then—as if by prior agreement—leapt into the sea.
The distance would have been too far for most martial artists to cross even with lightness skill.
The Ghost-Faced Twin Killers, however, stood far above “most.”
They skated across the calm waves, kicking the water in a rapid run, then launched themselves high toward the boat in a single bound.
“You’re here?”
Ja Gangcheon, fishing rod still in hand, rose the instant they sprang.
The moment his face came fully into view, thick killing intent poured from the Twin Killers’ eyes.
“Nice to see you.”
They would never forget the boy who greeted them with that pure, innocent smile. Because of him they had gained nothing they wanted and made enemies of the Wudang Sect besides.
By rights they should already have received the aphrodisiac formula from the Old Fiend of Blackwater and been testing it in a brothel by now—for their own pleasure, and to snare powerful men as tools.
“You little bastard!”
“I’ll kill you!”
Seething with rage, they were just about to land on the boat when—
BOOM!
Ja Gangcheon did something they had not expected.
They had anticipated some kind of trap the moment they leapt onto the deck—poison, perhaps, or hidden weapons. Whatever it was, they were confident they could block it if they stayed guarded.
They had not expected the boat itself to shatter.
CRACK—!
The vessel burst apart under the impact, leaving nowhere even to set their feet.
A foul premonition seized them as they tried to step back across the wreckage—
Splash!
Ja Gangcheon dove into the sea. Moments later the elder of the Twin Killers jerked, then was dragged under.
A thread?
The elder grabbed the line hauling at his ankle. The texture was wrong.
A chain?
Far too thin for a chain.
And that was not the only problem. As the seconds passed, a leaden weakness began to spread through him.
One name rose in his mind.
The elder of the Twin Killers had no chance to question how Byeok Cheon-pung’s hidden weapon had suddenly appeared. He was sinking deeper by the second. Whipping his head around and focusing his vision, he saw Ja Gangcheon gripping the other end of the chain in black gloves.
Where Ja Gangcheon looked almost at ease, the elder thrashed with everything he had to reach the surface. Even with his energy disrupted, he believed the overwhelming gap in internal power would let him force his way free.
I’ll have to accept internal injury.
Forcing his energy against the disruption could push him into qi deviation if it went badly. That was what made the Ghost Connection Chain so feared.
But the moment he poured out his energy, ready for the worst, he realized something was terribly wrong.
Ja Gangcheon met his blast with a palm strike of his own—and the impact, impossibly, held even.
Then an even more appalling sight unfolded.
Water arts!
Ja Gangcheon’s movements were unnaturally fast. Only then did the elder understand: his opponent was completely at home fighting underwater.
Disaster!
That was what the elder thought.
Got him.
And that was what Ja Gangcheon knew for certain.
If the man had been ready from the start, he might have lasted a long while. But panic had already shortened his breath, and the clash of energy only made it worse.
The problem was the other twin, who had sensed his brother’s crisis.
Searching not far away, the younger finally found them.
Deeper.
Ja Gangcheon reacted at once, dragging the elder farther down.
The younger twin chasing them was far less skilled in the water. Even so, the elder’s thrashing bought time, and the younger hurled waves of qi as he closed in until at last he was nearly upon them.
Ja Gangcheon smiled.
You made it all the way here looking like that. Now what?
He had been so focused on the chase that he had never considered what came after.
The Ghost-Faced Twin Killers suddenly understood they had only sunk into a deeper mire.
Boom!
An energy blast launched underwater smashed into the younger twin’s thigh. He blocked it in haste, but his balance broke and his body flipped over.
Ja Gangcheon shot upward like a fish, gliding past the younger twin just as the man recovered his center. He casually slipped the counterattack and, smiling, pulled on the black gloves.
Ghk—!
The younger twin clutched his throat and thrashed.
In the instant Ja Gangcheon had brushed past him, he had looped the Ghost Connection Chain around the man’s neck.
In the end, the chain that had begun at the elder’s ankle now circled the younger’s throat and finished in Ja Gangcheon’s hand.
It was the power of life and death over both of them.
And the one who held it had no intention of granting mercy. He offered them not even a scrap of a chance.
He simply gripped the chain and descended into deeper water.
A cold, merciless reaper.
Jinhae Harbor was silent.
Now and then a shockwave from beneath the sea threw up a spray of water, but even that had long since stilled.
More than half an hour passed.
“Gangcheon!”
Soaking wet, Ja Gangcheon reached the shore and climbed onto land.
Something was still connected to his hand.
“I caught a big one.”
Amazingly, what he had hauled in on that thin, fishing-line-like chain was a person.
The Ghost-Faced Twin Killers.
Those who had rushed to the harbor at the news could only stare in shock.
They had expected a bloody storm. Instead the Twin Killers had returned as corpses.
“H-Hyungnim!”
“G-Great Hero!”
Panseok and So Yeondok cried out in astonishment.
“It’s not finished yet.”
Ja Gangcheon unwound the chain from the Twin Killers’ bodies and coiled it around his black gloves. Then he turned toward the warehouse where the Uirim Hall men were locked away.
“We’ll take care of those bastards.”
It was So Yeondok who stepped forward in Ja Gangcheon’s place.
“We’ll handle it cleanly. No loose ends.”
“Why do you want to do it yourself?”
“I’m asking you as a favor. This is my business too.”
Ja Gangcheon saw the killing intent in the man’s eyes. It was not directed at him, so he did not bother to comment.
“All right.”
Thanks to that, Ja Gangcheon did not have to concern himself with the messy aftermath.
“Gangcheon. It’s all over now, right?”
“Yeah. Tonight I’m sleeping in a real bed.”
“I already laid out a soft new quilt for you.”
“What would I do without you.”
As if the events of moments ago had been a lie, they traded ordinary words and headed back to the Eastern Sea Trading Company.
Those left behind could only stare at the corpses of the Ghost-Faced Twin Killers, dumped carelessly on the docks, and did not dare to touch them.
Along the coast of Shandong Province, a rumor was taking shape.
And that night, more than two hundred corpses were cast into the distant sea as food for the fish.