The Trap in Sinners' Street
The Tower of Trials' first-floor residential zone, Sinners' Street.
Time passed, and night once again settled over the tower.
Dark silhouettes emerged from the shadows, moving slowly and deliberately. A few of them advanced with unsettling calm. Members of the Black Wolf Group had already taken positions, lying in wait to catch the Neck-Cutting Ghost.
“Damn it, do we have to keep waiting?”
Geum Jun-sik, the group's boss, spoke with visible irritation. Doubt crept in—maybe the information they'd received was wrong after all.
“Is this even right? If we screw this up…”
The subordinates began to murmur restlessly among themselves. The moon had dipped lower, yet not a single ant had shown itself, let alone the Neck-Cutting Ghost.
The subordinate who had brought Yeon Cheong looked flustered. “Hey, you said he’d come!”
“He will.”
Yeon Cheong, wedged between them, waited without the slightest change in expression. His composure unsettled the men; even Jun-sik clicked his tongue in disbelief.
“How the hell is a kid this calm? Or are you just ready to die?”
He pressed his blade against Yeon Cheong’s neck, close enough to draw blood at the slightest twitch. Yet Yeon Cheong answered without the faintest flicker of fear.
“Because there’s no reason for him to be wrong.”
“This little bastard…”
Jun-sik had known the boy was bold, but this level of audacity was unexpected. Facing a knife at his throat, Yeon Cheong spoke his piece with perfect composure. He was no ordinary kid.
And there’s no way the Neck-Cutting Ghost is actually going to show up.
Of course, Yeon Cheong’s words had been a lie. He only had one body; the Neck-Cutting Ghost would never appear in person. What he was truly waiting for was something else.
According to the information he had gathered, one of Eun-gu’s informants was scheduled to pass through this area tonight.
Eun-gu was an organization that had existed long before Yeon Cheong was born—a syndicate with deep roots. Formed when the first floor’s systems were still being established, its organizational power far surpassed that of other major criminal groups. If an ordinary person crossed Eun-gu, the guards would never recover the body. Even the guards themselves treated Eun-gu with extreme caution. After the black-market raid, their faces had twisted with frustration when they arrested Eun-gu members and executives.
Perhaps that was why, once the cleaning week ended, the guards stopped patrolling Sinners’ Street, where Eun-gu had taken root.
If I can just make them fight each other…
Individually, Eun-gu’s members weren’t particularly strong. Their strength lay in numbers. If the Black Wolf Group provoked them inside their own territory, they would swarm like hornets from a disturbed nest.
The Black Wolf members aren’t weak either, but one person can’t beat an army.
Yeon Cheong intended to exploit exactly that. He would let the Black Wolf Group clash with Eun-gu’s forces, then use the chaos to claim the heads of both bosses.
Footsteps echoed from the depths of Sinners’ Street. An Eun-gu informant stepped into view, his confident stride radiating pride in his organization.
“That’s him,” Yeon Cheong said, pointing.
Though the darkness made it hard to see the man’s face clearly, the Black Wolf members’ thirst for revenge burned hot enough to ignore such details. They looked ready to charge like moths to a flame.
“We’re going in.”
Jun-sik grinned, spun his blade once, and began walking forward. His subordinates followed.
Yeon Cheong confirmed they were moving, then slipped away using Yeongdeung. From his robe he drew a familiar object—Chunja Halmae’s mask.
Since the others were charging straight into the hornet’s nest, Sinners’ Street was about to become a battlefield. Yeon Cheong planned to reap the greatest possible benefit from the coming slaughter.
“Kill him!”
They raised their weapons and advanced on the informant. At Jun-sik’s command they rushed forward, beating him mercilessly. The Eun-gu man died before he could even scream, bones snapping, blood spraying across their hands.
Jun-sik’s face twisted into the savage mask of a beast lost in bloodlust.
“This is what happens when you mess with our group!”
Their petty desire for revenge was hastening their own deaths.
Yeon Cheong donned the mask and climbed onto a nearby rooftop.
“Time to get started.”
With the informant dead in the street, it was time to measure Eun-gu’s numbers.
Jun-sik panted heavily, staring down at the corpse. “Hah… hah…”
“Boss, this guy…”
One subordinate’s voice trembled. He had realized the man they killed was not the Neck-Cutting Ghost.
“He’s from Eun-gu! What do we do now?”
Jun-sik yanked the body’s face up for another look.
“Shit.”
The curse had barely left his lips when Yeon Cheong lit a lantern and hurled it into their midst.
Boom!
A small explosion of flame lit the street. The informant’s corpse lay exposed in the sudden light. The Black Wolf members froze in panic.
“Who’s there?! Who threw that—?!”
The moment their crime was illuminated, Yeon Cheong ascended the rooftop and observed the scene. The night’s darkness hid him perfectly, while Yeongdeung let him see everything as though it were right in front of him.
Now the bees come out.
Just as he predicted, residents began pouring into the street, cursing. They froze at the sight of roughly ten armed men surrounding the bloodied corpse of an Eun-gu informant.
“Those bastards!”
Eun-gu members flooded out of Sinners’ Street in overwhelming numbers—three or four times the size of the Black Wolf group. They encircled Jun-sik and his men.
“Shit! Where’d that brat go?!”
“He’s… he’s gone!”
Jun-sik felt as though he had been struck from behind. He cursed himself for letting revenge blind him into trusting an unverified source.
Yeon Cheong had known the Black Wolf Group would act on their grudge against the Neck-Cutting Ghost. He had simply used that knowledge. By scattering information and staking his own life, he had made the lie impossible to disbelieve. Even his honest eyes had lent credibility to the deception.
Sometimes, the truth can hide a lie.
Yeon Cheong adjusted his mask and smiled faintly beneath it. He hadn’t lied outright—he had merely bent the truth. Tonight, the masked Neck-Cutting Ghost would appear. And since Yeon Cheong himself was present, wearing the mask, his words had not been false.
“How dare you…”
Eun-gu’s members glared at the Black Wolf Group with murderous eyes, gripping blades and clubs. Both sides stood locked in a standoff.
“I’m dead tired, and these bastards come into our territory to cause trouble?”
A man pushed through the crowd—a short figure who looked about Yeon Cheong’s age, yet carried an aura far beyond his years.
“Boss!”
The Eun-gu members bowed their heads in unison.
Eun-gu’s leader, Park Eun-ho.
His personal appearance was a significant gain. It meant Yeon Cheong could remove two criminal leaders in one night.
Eun-ho spat and scowled at Jun-sik. “Didn’t I tell you to stay the hell out of our district? Already forgot?”
“What do I care about your damn district?”
“You should care! You turned my cute little brother into a bloody rag!”
Eun-ho exploded with rage. Even his own men flinched at the intensity.
So he really was a former deliveryman.
Eun-gu’s long history meant it had seen many leaders, but Park Eun-ho had been the strongest. After retiring from the deliverymen, he had thrown away his honors and built a fearsome reputation in Sinners’ Street. Eventually he became the organization’s boss.
“Don’t even think about walking out of here alive. The guards won’t find your corpses either!”
Eun-ho hefted two hammers from beside him, snorting with fury. Jun-sik raised his blade in response.
“This is so goddamn annoying.”
At his signal, the Black Wolf members charged with their weapons drawn.
The brawl erupted. Blood sprayed, skulls cracked. Sinners’ Street lived up to its name, turning into a vision of hell. Metal rang against metal; lanterns spread their flames until the street blazed with light.
Yeon Cheong finished his preparations and moved.
The guards would never come even if someone reported the fight. Most residents here were tied to criminal groups, and no one would mediate. Only the black market—where valuable goods changed hands—ever drew frequent reports, which was why the syndicates held their dealings in remote locations.
There were many ways to clean out this rotten street, but the surest method was cutting off the heads of each organization. Removing Park Eun-ho would also weaken the influence the upper floors could exert on the first floor.
“Let’s go.”
Yeon Cheong leapt from the rooftop.
Crash!
The Black Wolf member he landed on collapsed unconscious. Yeon Cheong snatched the man’s knife and slit his throat in one motion.
The masked figure had appeared.
Jun-sik spun around and met the mask’s empty gaze.
“You little— You’re the Neck-Cutting…”
Before he could finish, a struggling subordinate crossed his line of sight. In that instant the masked man vanished.
“…?”
For less than a second, Jun-sik’s mind raced. Had he seen a ghost? Or was it an illusion born of this hellish scene?
His vision tilted downward, as though he were falling.
Thud.
“Who the hell is that?”
Eun-ho rested a hammer on his shoulder, staring in disbelief. The masked man had just decapitated Jun-sik in a single stroke. Blood gushed from the stump as the body toppled.
Yeon Cheong gripped his blade and stared at Eun-ho.
“One goal accomplished. Now for the rest.”
“So you’re the Neck-Cutting Ghost?”
Eun-ho chuckled. Thirty of his men still stood. He saw no way a single masked intruder could reach him through that wall of bodies.
“I wouldn’t have come if I couldn’t.”
Yeon Cheong tightened his grip on the knife and advanced.