The Namgung Branch's Response
Bang!
I kicked the door open and stormed inside. The man dozing at the table, drool trailing from his mouth as he leaned on it, jerked awake and nearly toppled over backward.
“Wh-what the—?! A thief?!”
He shot to his feet, then smacked his own forehead.
“Ah, no way a thief would show up here. I thought it was another escort job with the escort agency again…”
The man looked at me. He was short and stocky, with sagging cheeks. His eyes were complicated as they raked me up and down; every thought that crossed his mind showed plain on his face.
First: Who is this guy?
Second: Could he be a guest?
Third: No, impossible.
The moment that chain of thought ended, his expression flipped.
“Who the hell are you?! Barging in here in broad daylight—do you even know where you are?!”
“Are you the one in charge of this capital branch?”
Clack.
I set a jade plaque the size of a finger joint on the table. A blue azure dragon coiled around it.
The man’s face flushed crimson as if it might burst. He slammed the table and roared.
“You miserable bastard, do you think this is some backwater peddler’s outpost?! How dare you act so brazen in front of Dokgo Mu of the great Namgung Family’s Luoyang branch…!”
His voice died away mid-sentence. The blue azure dragon on the table glittered in the sunlight streaming through the window.
“So brazen…”
His body lowered. He no longer dared even to touch it; he willingly brought his gaze down to the same height as the dragon carving on the table.
“Th-this is…”
Eyes bulging, he spat the words out.
“Th-this is the Family Head’s Myeong-ok-hopae!!”
“You recognize it.”
“G-g-g-good heavens…!”
Dokgo Mu, manager of the Namgung Family’s Luoyang branch, stared at me as if he might stop breathing altogether.
“Wh-who are you, sir?! The Family Head’s Myeong-ok-hopae is something he almost never even takes out—and you’ve left the actual thing as collateral?!”
Thud.
I opened my hand before him.
“Sir, this is…?”
Dokgo Mu asked respectfully. My voice came out cold as frost.
“I need the help of the Namgung Family’s Luoyang branch.”
“Starting when?”
“Right now.”
I let out a short breath and added,
“Urgent business.”
Dokgo Mu blinked. He wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth and straightened his disheveled clothes.
“From the moment the Myeong-ok-hopae is presented, our Luoyang branch will make assisting the honored guest our absolute highest priority.”
He spoke with solemn resolve.
“Whatever you require, simply say the word.”
It was a stable on the outskirts of the capital.
“No one will come and go here. Every scrap of land within a two-hour walk of this place belongs to our Namgung Family’s Luoyang branch. Ordinary people have no reason to enter private property.”
Dokgo Mu led the way as he spoke. He pulled the rope on the massive stable door.
Creeeak.
“And everything will be handled inside.”
From the outside it looked like a stable. Inside, however, there was not a single strand of animal hair. It was packed with every kind of weapon, armor, and document.
“The Namgung Family keeps seven secret locations at every branch. This is one of them. And—”
Dokgo Mu clapped his hands. From the darkness stepped an elderly man with a silver beard, of advanced years. His clothes were the worn, humble garb of a commoner, yet they had been starched stiff and were immaculately clean. His back was not bent in the slightest; he carried himself with quiet dignity.
The old man bowed politely.
“A pleasure to meet you. I am Yun Hyeon, overall director of the Four Secret Formations of the Luoyang branch.”
Dokgo Mu introduced him from the side.
“Yun Hyeon started as a porter, but with his brilliant mind he has long served as the central administrator of our Luoyang branch. Whatever the honored guest desires, speak to this man and he will assist you.”
Yun Hyeon bowed his head respectfully toward me and asked,
“In that spirit, may I inquire as to the name or suitable form of address by which I should call the honored guest from now on?”
“Biryu.”
I pushed up the face covering that hid my lower face and answered without the slightest hesitation.
“Biryu of the Blood Death Sect.”
“Understood, Young Master Biryu.”
Yun Hyeon inclined his head.
“Should you require anything while you are in Luoyang, please seek me out. From this moment until the day Young Master Biryu says it is enough, I will devote my full strength to assisting you at your side.”
After that, everything proceeded with smooth efficiency. Yun Hyeon was extraordinarily capable. Despite his age, he never once showed the slightest discomfort in dealing with someone as young as me. He was always calm, refined, and courteous. In his work he was meticulous, with a razor-sharp sense of when to begin and when to end.
“Here are the results of the investigation you requested.”
Yun Hyeon handed me five thick bundles of paper. A massive table stood in the center of the stable. I spread them out there and placed paperweights at both ends of the drying sheets. The bundles were packed solid with writing, not a single gap.
Yun Hyeon stood before me.
“I conducted the investigation exactly as Young Master Biryu instructed. It took seven hours. Twenty-two silver coins to the Lower Gate, and contact with five groups from the Beggars’ Sect in northern Luoyang and two groups in the west, sweeping up rumors overall.”
He pointed at the papers with a stick as he spoke.
“The rumors we gathered were cross-checked against one another and classified by credibility. Credibility was graded from one to five; anything grade three or below was boldly discarded. What you see on these papers now are only the facts with credibility of grade three or higher. In addition—”
Yun Hyeon set a red basket and a blue basket beneath the table.
“The red basket contains the items of grade-three credibility or lower.”
“And the blue basket?”
Yun Hyeon gave a short “Ah” of realization.
“Those are the materials on the Ju family of Luoyang’s powerful houses—the ones you specifically ordered investigated.”
I skimmed the contents of the red basket first and set them aside. Even to my eyes, the grade-three-or-lower items failed to hang together. As if he had expected exactly that, Yun Hyeon nodded and began elaborating on the papers before me.
“Nearly every circumstance Young Master Biryu conjectured has proven correct. Cheongunryong, third-generation disciple of the Kunlun Sect, currently forms one of the pillars of the Oho-samhwa, yet for certain reasons he has already been settled in Luoyang for more than two years. And those reasons are exactly as Young Master hinted.”
I needed certainty before I could act. Even after Yun Hyeon left to handle other business, I remained at the table reading the report on the sleeping dragon of Kunlun.
Right now I needed Cheongunryong’s seal of recognition. I had learned that much while working as a bodyguard for the Namgung Family. Granting a seal of recognition meant taking joint responsibility for that person’s conduct—it was that weighty and meaningful. It was not simply a matter of stamping a seal once and being done.
And when it came to a martial artist’s pride, I knew better than anyone. Once things went sideways, even those stuffy, eccentric bookworms of scholars would click their tongues at how stubborn martial artists could be.
I had to strike hard from the very beginning. Better to open with a move he could not refuse and make my demand, rather than poke around half-heartedly and end up with nothing.
At first I had planned to use a wanted poster as an excuse to talk with Cheongunryong and, if things went well, ask for his cooperation in granting the seal. But after watching his conflict with the young master of the Ju family and seeing the character he displayed in the process, I revised the plan.
“I don’t understand. Why is the Host going so far for that person?”
“It’s not for him.”
I answered Mumyeong’s question shortly.
“It’s for me.”
“I don’t follow.”
“That type—whatever else they may be—always tries to repay a debt of gratitude they’ve received.”
Even when I was scraping by on the capital’s underbelly I had seen martial artists of that rigid, upright sort. Solve the problem that troubles him most. Then he will do everything he can to repay me, and I can press the negotiation while holding the superior position. That was my plan.
“Besides, with Cheongunryong it won’t end with just one seal. How I handle this will more than double the overall difficulty of this trial.”
Among the eight sleeping dragons of the current jianghu, Cheongunryong was the only one whose whereabouts were known. To pass this third punitive trial I needed to obtain seals of recognition from at least two of the eight rising stars known as the Oho-samhwa. That meant securing Cheongunryong’s seal while simultaneously using him to learn the locations of the remaining seven whose trails had gone cold.
Only then could I move forward.
In a way, asking someone to reveal the whereabouts of people with whom he was grouped as a single collective and with whom he had built friendships could be an unpleasant experience—even an act of rudeness. That was all the more reason I had to begin the negotiation from a position of overwhelming advantage.
“Everything I expected was right.”
The report detailed Cheongunryong’s every movement over the past two years. Two years earlier a massive flood had triggered natural disaster and famine in Luoyang, producing countless refugees. At that time Cheongunryong, having finished his training at Kunlun and begun wandering the jianghu to build his reputation as one of the Oho-samhwa, had grown attached to several refugee families. While helping them recover and stand on their own, he had incurred a huge debt to the Ju family.
And…
On one side was a brief investigation into the Ju family’s reputation. I had not specifically ordered it, but Yun Hyeon had apparently gathered it while carrying out the rest of the work and added it. Remarkable eye and planning ability. I murmured a quiet word of admiration and read the passage.
The content was simple and familiar. The Ju family of Luoyang had amassed enormous wealth through the salt trade by operating salt fields; they were also notorious for usury and ranked among the top four powers and fortunes in the city. Furthermore, the Ju family had taken complete charge of rescuing and rehabilitating the five refugee families connected to Cheongunryong. The debt Cheongunryong had incurred in the process was—
“Host, has the currency system changed a great deal while I was asleep inside the jade?”
“No. Impossible.”
Mumyeong’s question said everything. I was not particularly sharp about profit. I was a martial artist, not a merchant. Still, having scraped by on the capital’s bottom rungs and lived on the front lines of daily survival, I knew roughly what prices were and what a person could reasonably be expected to handle.
Looking at the endlessly inflated list of charges and the absurd sum boldly presented to Cheongunryong under every possible pretext, only one thought came to mind.
He’s been played for a sucker. The real problem is that the sucker himself doesn’t even realize he’s a sucker.
The rest of the story painted itself in my head. Given Cheongunryong’s upright nature, he would never have wanted to dump a debt that began with his own unilateral decision onto his sect. He would have tried to repay it somehow by his own strength. That was why a disciple of one of the Nine Great Sects had ended up doing the kind of rough work usually left to wandering swordsmen—bounty hunting—swallowing a certain amount of pride in the process.
And that got twisted in the public eye until ordinary people saw him as a righteous martial artist who beat down vicious criminals for their sake.
Judging by the amount, this was a sum no human being could ever repay. No matter how many vicious criminals he caught, the interest alone would never be covered. The Ju family had not set this trap simply to make money. They had used the debt as a weapon to turn one of the Oho-samhwa into a piece that would protect them, while also hanging a debt over the Kunlun Sect itself.
By now Cheongunryong might have realized he had been deceived. When I faced him, the way he bit his lip in humiliation even as he stood in my path to protect Ju Aseong, the son of the Ju family, made it painfully clear that this was not a situation he wanted.
“In that case, Host, there is only one thing left for you to do.”
I nodded. What I had to do was clear.
Infiltrate the Ju family—one of the top four powers in Luoyang—and seize Cheongunryong’s debt documents. And to do that, I would have to stake my life as well.
“Young Master Biryu, please follow me.”
Yun Hyeon called. I followed him. As he led the way he said,
“The weapons, various materials, and everything else you requested have been prepared.”
I knew little about weapon crafting or materials. But there was no need to worry. Inside my head slept a nightmare born of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult that could advise me on such things.
“Everything?”
Yun Hyeon nodded.
“Yes, everything. Fortunately most of it was already in our secret vault, so it was easy.”
Yun Hyeon led the way into the secret vault. He pressed a section of one wall of the stable. The ordinary-looking wall slid aside. We entered. A dark corridor stretched ahead, barely wide enough for a single adult to pass sideways. The darkness deepened. Yun Hyeon groped along the wall and activated some mechanism.
Tung. Tung-tung-tung.
Night-luminescent pearls set into the ceiling sensed my presence and began to glow with a hazy light.
Hiss.
Yun Hyeon struck a fire-starter and lit a torch. In the flickering light, the walls were lined with every kind of weapon and armor, and hundreds of glass bottles.
“How is it? I don’t know if it will suit the tastes of a young master from the Blood Death Sect.”
I nodded.
“Have all the people I asked you to recruit arrived?”
“Ah, yes. I recruited everyone who has mastered the martial arts you specified. They are waiting outside. I understand the craftsmen, but why call people who have learned martial arts…?”
“…?”
Yun Hyeon said,
“May I ask the reason?”
“….”
“Of course this is only a question meant to grasp Young Master’s intent so I can offer the most optimized assistance. If it makes you uncomfortable, you need not answer.”
“The reason.”
I looked at Yun Hyeon. The candle flame wavered. In a dry voice I gave him exactly one sentence.
“I’m going to do some copying.”