How Could This Possibly Be a Coincidence
Fwoosh — a chilling sound rang out as a blade sliced cleanly through skin.
The Vice Master of Salmak stared at Jin Seongun with disbelief written across his face.
At his feet, his beloved straight dagger lay shattered into scattered fragments across the floor.
"Why did you stop?"
the Vice Master asked.
Only because that man of unfathomable martial skill had withheld his strength at the very last moment had the wound been nothing more than a deep gash across the shoulder. Had he meant it, the Vice Master's body would have been severed clean in two.
The Vice Master's words were correct.
Jin Seongun had deliberately chosen not to kill him.
He did not know the organization called Salmak in any great detail. But even he could understand that if he killed the man before him, fresh assassins would simply keep coming, one after another, making a nuisance of themselves.
Worse, Salmak's true master might come calling in person.
"Cook Seo, let's be realistic here — is wiping out Salmak even possible?"
A remarkably level question.
The Vice Master and Seo Yugyeom both secretly clicked their tongues. Not a single soul under heaven had ever dared so much as entertain the thought of subjugating Salmak.
Not the Martial Alliance, not the Nine Sects and Five Noble Clans — not even the Heavenly Demon Cult could have managed it.
"Can't be done. Nobody knows how many assassins Salmak keeps, how many branches it operates, or even who its true master is."
In other words, wiping out Salmak would mean scouring every inch of the Central Plains until the end of one's days.
For Jin Seongun, that was simply too much trouble.
He gave a small nod, then looked at the Vice Master and asked,
"Any thought of going back?"
It was the cleanest solution available.
Not that he expected the man to accept it.
If he keeps being stubborn, the right thing to do is kill the Vice Master here and now. Even if he is Cook Seo's old master, there's no helping that.
The Vice Master took a step back, pressing a hand to his slashed shoulder to stop the bleeding.
The humiliation of it all wrung a hollow laugh out of him. He had survived decades in the world of assassins, only to be treated like this by two martial artists barely past their twentieth year.
The Vice Master fixed a long, steady gaze on Seo Yugyeom.
The man wore neither a mask nor the dark-hued robe that matched the shadows. His sleeves appeared to hold no poison pellets, no concealed weapons. Worse still, the dagger clenched in his grip gave off nothing but the faint smell of fish.
The unmistakable figure of a cook, through and through.
"So you truly mean to abandon the path of the assassin."
"That's right."
Seo Yugyeom no longer addressed him with honorifics — a quiet declaration that his heart had left Salmak entirely.
The Vice Master didn't mind. Titles and manner of speech had never been things assassins cared much about anyway.
"Can you bear the weight of your own destiny?"
The Heavenly Killing Star.
It was never a blessing. It was a horrific curse sent down from heaven, nothing short of divine punishment — a constitution that drove a man mad unless he kept killing.
And on top of that, heaven granted the talent to kill as many people as one pleased. If that wasn't a curse, what on earth could it be?
"Honestly? I don't have much confidence. But with this, the story changes."
Seo Yugyeom looked between the Vice Master and Jin Seongun. There was not a trace of his usual mischief and levity.
His expression turned graver than it had ever been — and then, without warning, he dropped to his knees.
"Vice Master. Thank you for everything you taught me. I truly did regard you as my master. And Jin Seongun."
Their eyes met.
Seo Yugyeom's gaze was somehow resolute; Jin Seongun's, as always, went past calm and landed somewhere closer to detached.
"...If I ever lose control of my killing intent and my eyes go red — kill me on the spot with that same sword that once cut down even the Vice Master of Salmak. Only if you promise me that can I stay at the inn with an easy heart."
"Done."
"Hey — that answer was way too fast."
A faint flicker of hurt crossed Seo Yugyeom's face.
Oblivious or indifferent, Jin Seongun simply continued.
"If a blade turns from food toward people, what kind of cook could it belong to? I count Cook Seo my friend — but I have never once accepted an assassin possessed by bloodlust as a friend of mine."
In other words: the moment you go berserk, you're no longer my friend — just a monster, and I'll put you down without hesitation.
However one looked at it, those were chilling words. Seo Yugyeom swallowed hard — all the more so because he had already witnessed what Jin Seongun's martial arts could do.
"So am I still your friend, then, as long as I'm a cook?"
"Strictly speaking, we're innkeeper and cook, which puts me a rung above you, but... yes. Friends for now."
He flashed a bit of an innkeeper's authority, then conceded graciously. They had shared countless drinks and conversations together. He had rarely opened his heart to anyone in his life, and Seo Yugyeom was the first friend his own age he'd ever had — how could the man not be a friend?
"Right. We're friends now, then. Though I'm still older than you, you know."
"I'm the one holding the ledger as innkeeper, so let's just call it even and say friends."
The authority of an innkeeper truly was something else.
Beyond a mere laborer — a symbol of capital and power. Jin Seongun was half-drunk on that heady sweetness when the Vice Master slowly shook his head.
"You two have both lost your minds completely."
Seo Yugyeom and Jin Seongun turned to look at him at the same time. If the man refused to give up, it would be best, they agreed silently, to kill him on the spot and be rid of future trouble.
Perhaps he read it in their eyes. The Vice Master's tone grew slightly urgent, though he forced himself to stay composed to the last.
"I see no need to block someone marching willingly into the swamp of death. So let me make you a prophecy. Consumed by your killing intent, you will either kill Jeomsoi — or Jeomsoi will kill you. One of you two is certain to die at the other's hand."
"Vice Master, if you're going to do us a favor, do it nicely — why curse us on the way out?"
"......."
Awkward, the Vice Master heaved a deep sigh.
He had completed countless contracts over a lifetime, yet never once had his body felt this drained.
Was it the deep cut from that sword? Or perhaps — the first time since becoming an assassin of Salmak — that he had ever abandoned a mission.
"Cheonsalgwi. What a waste it was, teaching you anything at all."
With those words, the Vice Master turned away, one hand pressed to his wounded shoulder.
Seo Yugyeom watched in silence as the man receded with quiet footsteps. Somehow, his retreating figure looked remarkably small.
Seo Yugyeom bowed deeply toward the Vice Master's back. It was a farewell to the man he had genuinely called master — and repayment for an act of kindness that defied all reason.
Then, mid-stride, the Vice Master stopped.
He abruptly glanced back over his shoulder, drew something from his sleeve, and hurled it.
True to a grandmaster of concealed weapons, the speed and precision were astonishing. Seo Yugyeom snapped out a hand and caught whatever had been aimed at his brow.
A dagger. The Heavenly Killing Dagger — the blade the Vice Master had always favored, forged of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron, an exquisite weapon of terrible coldness and hardness.
Even Seo Yugyeom's alias, Cheonsalgwi, had been derived from this very dagger — which was to say, inherited from the Vice Master himself.
"The Cheonsalgwi you knew just died with a hole through his brow."
"I'm still alive, though."
At Jin Seongun's remark, the Vice Master and Seo Yugyeom both turned to glare at him, faces twisted in exasperation.
"It's a figure of speech, you idiot."
"Ah."
Seo Yugyeom clicked his tongue, and Jin Seongun nodded in understanding. The Vice Master regarded the two of them with an odd expression for a moment, then turned and resumed walking.
Just as he'd said — Cheonsalgwi was dead. All that remained was Seo Yugyeom, cook of Seongun Inn.
And as the Vice Master labored to convince himself of exactly that, Seo Yugyeom's voice drifted after him, the dagger turning over in his hands.
"Feels like this thing could cut through pig bones clean without me even needing to wrap it in blade qi."
The Vice Master's footsteps faltered — just for an instant.
Take it back?
The thought crossed his mind, but it was far too graceless to entertain. He soon resigned himself and walked on.
The master of Hubei's Dark Faction — the Southern Black Alliance.
The Wudang Sect, the Zhuge Noble Clan, even the Martial Alliance itself — all of them, seated as they were within Hubei Province, tended to avoid open conflict with the Southern Black Alliance.
Not, of course, out of fear.
"Anyone who crosses me has always paid for it. I have lived my whole life by one rule: even if I die, I take one of their arms with me."
Jo Raeak, Lord of the Southern Black Alliance, spoke in a low, measured voice.
The documents spread before him were crammed with accounts of it all — the fall of the Prosperity Guild, his son's death, and the seizure of the Yichang market by the Hyeongju Merchant Guild.
For a long while, Jo Raeak said nothing.
The Chief Steward seated across from him couldn't even bring himself to swallow, head bowed low.
Having attended at Jo Raeak's side for many years, he understood with perfect clarity just how dangerous this moment was.
"Bring tea."
At his word, the maids waiting outside bustled into motion. Before long, the fragrance of tea filled the office.
Jo Raeak was unlike most Dark Faction chieftains. Rarely did he raise his voice in anger, or lose himself to emotion and smash something to pieces.
The tea soothed his throat. Jo Raeak closed his eyes slowly and let out a long, deliberate breath — an effort to master himself.
Tap. He set the teacup down on the table.
A thin crack had spiderwebbed across the cup.
Seeing it, the Chief Steward bowed his head even lower.
"So some random demon has wiped out the Prosperity Guild to the last man, is that it?"
"Yes. According to the reports, that's the shape of it."
"And what do you think?"
The Chief Steward's mind raced.
Not a single crack in his composure could be allowed to show. In Hubei Province at least, the number of men who had earned Jo Raeak's fury and lived to tell of it could be counted on one hand.
"I believe there's merit to it."
"Why."
"The Prosperity Guild was no minor power. Yet not one of them escaped — every last soul died in a single night. Even Oh Jeong-san, Guild Leader of the Hyeongju Merchant Guild, couldn't have managed it."
"True enough. That Oh Jeong-san fellow's martial arts are nothing remarkable."
At least through Jo Raeak's eyes, that was so.
The Chief Steward nodded and pressed on.
"Nor would an elder of Wudang or the Martial Alliance have stepped in — there would be no reason for it."
"So the Prosperity Guild simply had the misfortune of stumbling into bad luck?"
"...The world is full of accidents like that."
Jo Raeak gave a slow nod.
Thinking back on his son's temperament, it was entirely plausible the boy had antagonized some wandering master without even recognizing him for what he was. Strange masters were as plentiful as grains of sand in this world — anyone might have flown into a rage and slaughtered the whole guild.
It could have been a Public Enemy of the Martial World on the run from the Alliance, or a Great Demon Prince out roaming from the Heavenly Demon Cult.
In the martial world, the price of failing to read one's opponent had always been paid in blood.
And yet.
"Did you drink last night?"
"P-pardon? No, my lord. Of course I didn't—"
"Then has trouble found its way into your household?"
"...No. Thanks to your care and protection, my lord, all is well at home."
"Then you've simply gotten old, haven't you."
The Chief Steward flinched.
In an instant, terror flooded both his eyes.
"M-my lord — Lord of the Alliance — grant me one more chance, I beg you."
"I've granted you two more just now, have I not?"
Jo Raeak said it as he poured fresh tea into the man's cup.
"Don't take it too hard. That's what the Dark Faction is, isn't it? One mistake, and the wolves come swarming. Keep a man at my side whose eyes have gone cloudy with age and comfort, and one day it will be me they devour."
With that, Jo Raeak gestured at the cup as if to say, drink up.
The Chief Steward stared at it — then picked it up with trembling care. His hands shook so badly the tea spilled onto the floor.
"...My lord."
"Drink."
Jo Raeak's voice was merciless.
The Chief Steward understood there was no escaping this. And if there was no escape, only one path remained.
"Please — look after my family, at least."
"It shall be done."
The Chief Steward closed his eyes and drank.
The cup was nearly empty when—
CRACK!
The Chief Steward's head vanished along with the cup. Nothing remained above his empty shoulders but the rippling aftermath of the released force Jo Raeak had poured out.
"Someone come in."
A subordinate waiting outside entered at once — and jolted at the sight of the headless Chief Steward slumped dead in his seat.
"I'm in poor spirits. Arrange a proper funeral for the Chief Steward, and compensate his family generously — nothing they could find fault with."
The Chief Steward had grown too old to judge clearly. But letting him simply walk away was unthinkable; he knew far too much about the Southern Black Alliance's affairs.
Jo Raeak judged this to be the best of all available outcomes. It was by living exactly this way that he had risen to become the sovereign of Hubei's underworld.
"Summon the Lord of the Black Serpent Unit."
"Yes, my lord."
Once the subordinates had carried the body out and the room fell silent, Jo Raeak's eyes gleamed with a feral light.
"How could this possibly be a coincidence."
Not a single day had passed between the fall of the Prosperity Guild and the Hyeongju Merchant Guild moving in.
"Oh Jeong-san. You've picked up a Wudang priest to hide behind, and now you've got the gall to run wild."
What enraged him was not his son's death — it was the loss of the business itself.
If he walked into Yichang personally, he could tear men like Oh Jeong-san apart while they still drew breath.
The problem was what came after.
Oh Jeong-san was, in name and in fact, a secular disciple of the Wudang Sect. Kill him, and Wudang would have no choice but to move. No — the moment Jo Raeak so much as set foot toward Yichang, Wudang would already be watching.
In the end, what mattered was justification.
Rising from bare dirt to his current seat could never be achieved by martial skill alone. It took the ability to arrange the board in one's own favor — in other words, the art of survival through scheming.
Dozens of ways to retake the Yichang market were already surfacing in Jo Raeak's mind, one after another.
Just then, the Lord of the Black Serpent Unit he had summoned earlier entered.
"You called for me."
"I hear an old friend of yours is branch master of the Haomun branch."
"Yes. We've been close since we were boys."
Jo Raeak nodded, looking thoroughly satisfied.
"Then arrange a meeting."