The Teacup
Deep in the night, Jin Seongun returned to his quarters after closing up for the day. The dwelling the old man Shin Mok had built for him in the backyard pleased him anew every time he laid eyes on it.
As always, he heated water, finished his bath, and changed out of clothes steeped all day in the smell of liquor and food.
The air was still and warm. Sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, he slowly circulated the Greeting-Moon Heart Method, and its gentle energy flowed through his entire body in the great circuit, soothing a mind and body worn down by the long day.
The moonlight seeping through the window did not scatter but gathered around him instead. The Greeting-Moon Heart Method showed its greatest potency on nights when the moon shone bright. Silver-white light settled into each of his breaths, slowly but surely filling his dantian.
It struck him anew that he now had an inn bearing his own name, and stranger still that he had come to learn martial arts from the greatest war gods of past and present. People gathering at the inn was sometimes tiresome and hectic, but they were mostly good people, so it was fine.
Stray thoughts faded away one by one. Just as his mind sank endlessly toward a deeper state of no-self—
Jin Seongun quietly opened his eyes.
His gaze moved from the door to the wall, then continued on to the window.
"Seo the Young Hero?"
A dark figure vaulted the wall and vanished without warning. The only ones left at the inn were Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom.
Jin Seongun rose from his seat. Seo Yugyeom had looked particularly unsteady today, and worry gnawed at him.
Throwing his long robe carelessly over his light clothing, he took up the Black Firmament Sword. The words the Salmak Vice Master had spoken not long ago came back to him—if the Heavenly Killing Star's murderous intent devoured Seo Yugyeom, he would cut down everyone around him to ribbons.
Exhaling a long breath, Jin Seongun spread his qi sense wide. A spiderweb-fine net of perception blanketed the entire surrounding area.
Jin Seongun stepped out of his quarters and leapt lightly. Pushing off the fence, he lifted his body into the air again, and because he rose so high it seemed he might touch the moonlight, the streets of Yichang spread out beneath him at a glance.
What is he doing?
There was Seo Yugyeom, sprinting through the darkness with his signature stealth art. So secretive was his movement that even Jin Seongun's eyes could only catch the faintest blur of him.
Jin Seongun followed at a distance. The killing aura radiating from Seo Yugyeom was growing fainter by the moment. That was not a good sign.
Just as a beast holds its breath before pouncing on prey, assassins suppressed their presence as the moment of the kill drew near.
Suddenly Seo Yugyeom turned into an alley—and in the same instant, his presence vanished as though washed away. Jin Seongun quickened his pace.
Following him into the alley, he found Seo Yugyeom standing motionless in the middle of the street, head tilted upward.
"Seo the Young Hero."
He called out carefully, but it didn't seem to reach Seo Yugyeom's ears. Even in the dark, Jin Seongun could see that his eyes held no focus.
He followed the direction of those unfocused eyes. A migratory bird was flying low.
Without warning, Seo Yugyeom kicked off a house's wall and shot into the air—cleverly timed to the moment a cloud swallowed the moonlight.
In a heartbeat his form vanished into the dark, and after a brief pause, the bird fell to the ground, bleeding.
Thick blood clung to Seo Yugyeom's Heavenly Killing Dagger. He stared down at the stain on the blade with a dazed face.
Jin Seongun watched him with a seriousness that rarely showed on his features. If there had been anyone else nearby, would the Young Hero have stabbed not a bird, but a person?
While he was turning this over, both their gazes snapped around at the same moment. Someone was staggering toward them from far down the street.
Jin Seongun's brow twitched.
It was Noh Sang-won, thoroughly drunk.
Seo Yugyeom's hollow eyes were fixed on him.
Before long, his hand clamped hard around the Heavenly Killing Dagger. The killing intent that had been seeping out of him was folded away once more, neat and clean.
The moment Seo Yugyeom took a step forward—
Thwack!
A pebble Jin Seongun had flicked lightly struck him squarely on the temple. With that crisp crack, focus returned to his eyes.
Waking from the dream, Seo Yugyeom stared at the blood on his dagger with trembling eyes.
Then a familiar voice came from beside him.
"It wasn't a person's blood."
It was Jin Seongun's voice.
Seo Yugyeom felt relief, and yet his mind was in turmoil. Controlling his murderous intent had been getting harder and harder lately.
Their eyes met. Both looked at each other with somewhat complicated feelings.
"Let's head back for now," Jin Seongun said—because by then Noh Sang-won had staggered close enough to be visible to the naked eye.
Seo Yugyeom nodded without a word, and the two made their way home.
"That's how it happened."
Jin Seongun recounted everything he had witnessed. Listening, Seo Yugyeom sorted out what had been dream and what had been real.
He let out a short sigh. He had killed only a single bird. But he was afraid, because he didn't know where this blade would point next time.
"Rest a moment."
Saying that, Jin Seongun stepped out of the room. Left alone, Seo Yugyeom wiped the blood from his dagger with a cloth. Vivid red soaked into the white fabric.
It felt as if that cloth were his own life. A white cloth already stained with blood could never be scrubbed back to white, no matter how diligently one rubbed.
I have to leave.
So Seo Yugyeom resolved.
It was not an easy decision. Seongun Inn had become his home.
But he had no confidence in controlling his murderous intent. If Jin Seongun helped him as he had today, the worst could be avoided, perhaps—yet a single instant's slip could bring something irreversible. He wasn't the only one at Seongun Inn.
Noh Sang-won and Han Seong-chun, who knew no martial arts at all, went without saying. Even Seomun Ak, who had learned a fair bit, would die if Seo Yugyeom lost to his impulses and swung his blade.
Having made up his mind, his gaze grew heavy.
Right. This was always what my life was.
A life of settling nowhere, craving only blood and slaughter. Born under the Heavenly Killing Star and still daring to reach for a new life—what an arrogant greed that was, he thought.
Just as he took one last look around the room and rose from his seat, Jin Seongun came back in, holding a teacup.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm leaving."
Jin Seongun nodded. If a man said he was going, what right did anyone have to stand in his way?
"Wouldn't it be fine to leave after a cup of tea?"
Seo Yugyeom looked at the teacup in Jin Seongun's hand. Soon the two of them sat down facing each other. There was no table or anything of the sort—they simply set the cups on the floor and faced one another.
Abruptly, Jin Seongun asked, "Your murderous intent—can't control it?"
"Seems not. What in the world have I done."
Seo Yugyeom remembered with painful clarity that, in that final moment, he had been about to move on Noh Sang-won.
"You did nothing."
"If you hadn't been there, I would have."
"But I was."
Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom looked at each other, and a staring match broke out on the spot. Normally Seo Yugyeom would have spoken first, but today was different.
"Why all of a sudden? Nothing like this ever happened before."
"The Hwaun Merchant Group, probably."
"So it wasn't fine after all."
Jin Seongun tried to understand what Seo Yugyeom was feeling. He had no family of his own, but he could well imagine how it would grieve a person to have a sibling they cherished—a sister they treated as blood—genuinely loathe them and try to kill them.
A brief silence followed.
"By the way, why do you even run an inn? With your skill, bluntly speaking, you could live easier and richer. As much money or fame as you wanted—yours for the taking."
Seo Yugyeom asked. He'd never gotten a proper answer before, but somehow he felt that now, Jin Seongun might actually tell him.
Jin Seongun answered in a plain, unadorned tone.
"For the same reason as that teacup."
"The teacup?"
Seo Yugyeom looked down at the cup on the floor. Warm tea sat inside it, wisps of white steam curling up.
Jin Seongun continued.
"I was an orphan. More days went hungry than days I ate. The place that let me live like a human being was an inn. A place where I didn't have to starve, didn't have to shiver in the cold. That's why I love inns."
A very simple reason—but a certain one.
An inn had food, and it had warmth.
To Jin Seongun, that was enough.
"Well, having done inn work my whole life, it's also just what I'm most comfortable with by now."
"I see."
Seo Yugyeom listened with genuine attention. Hearing the story, the space called Seongun Inn felt different to him now, somehow.
"A place where you don't shiver and don't starve. That's an incredible kind of place."
"It is."
Seo Yugyeom gazed down at his tea for a moment, then drained it in a single gulp. It had cooled a little, but the remaining warmth heated his body in an instant.
"Stay at least seven weeks before you go. If you haven't found your answer by then."
At Jin Seongun's proposal, Seo Yugyeom nodded. Right—seven weeks or so, with Jin Seongun always at his side, nothing terrible was likely to happen.
The next morning, Seo Yugyeom came to work having spent a sleepless night staring at the ceiling.
Seomun Ak, who had grown remarkably diligent of late, was sweeping the inn's floor. Their eyes met.
Seo Yugyeom said flatly, "What are you looking at, punk."
"……"
Seomun Ak quickly averted his gaze. He already knew the extent of Seo Yugyeom's martial prowess, and he'd once swung a fist at him besides—he had nothing to say.
Seo Yugyeom entered the kitchen wearing the expression of a victor. He was trimming ingredients with Han Seong-chun, who had arrived just as early, when—true to form—Hyeon Un shuffled into the inn, his face still half-drunk.
"Cook Seo, the usual, if you please."
Ordinarily he'd have clicked his tongue—that Taoist just drinks and eats all day—but today was different.
Seo Yugyeom rolled somen noodles into a clear, deeply simmered broth he had poured his heart into, and brought it over personally.
"Drink the broth first. It'll settle your stomach right away."
"?"
Hyeon Un stared at him as though he'd heard something not meant for human ears.
"Did you eat something bad? Or have you finally poisoned the noodles? If so, it's no use. I may not be immune to all poisons, but I'm immune to at least a hundred."
"The head of the Hwaun Merchant Group, the one I mentioned yesterday—she's my sister."
Hyeon Un's words stopped dead.
At this out-of-nowhere confession, Seomun Ak froze mid-sweep and Han Seong-chun's hands stilled over his knife. Both turned to stare at Seo Yugyeom.
His words continued, calm and even.
"My birth parents died early; I never even saw their faces. When I was young, the Hwaun Merchant Group took me in, and……"
Seo Yugyeom recited his life story, start to finish.
Quite a heavy tale, delivered with surprising detachment. Thanks to that, Hyeon Un had no choice but to listen to the whole thing without touching his noodles.
When the story ended, only then did Hyeon Un pick up his chopsticks and say, "A hard-fated life indeed."
And that was all.
He moved his chopsticks to eat—whereupon Seo Yugyeom pulled the bowl toward himself and said, "So, about my murderous intent constantly boiling up. Any remedy? You're a Taoist, you must know something."
Hyeon Un tried to pull his stolen noodles back. But Seo Yugyeom's grip was at full strength, and the bowl would not budge.
If he forced it, the bowl would shatter and the noodles would spill everywhere.
Seomun Ak, in charge of sweeping the floor, watched the standoff with a tense face.
Hyeon Un's and Seo Yugyeom's eyes locked head-on. Seo Yugyeom showed no intention whatsoever of yielding.
After a brief battle of gazes, Hyeon Un sighed.
"Fine. I have eaten my fill of your kitchen, after all……"
At those words, the strength left Seo Yugyeom's hand. Hyeon Un took a spoonful of the broth, nodded with a satisfied face, and went on.
"First, I need to know just how deep your murderous intent runs."
"Truth is, I bear the Heavenly Killing Star."
And in the same instant, Hyeon Un's hand shot out.
In the blink of an eye, the tip of his chopstick was resting against Seo Yugyeom's throat. Astonishingly, a faint sword qi shimmered along the chopstick's end.
If Hyeon Un applied the slightest more force, Seo Yugyeom's life would end right there. Yet Seo Yugyeom did not so much as flinch, watching Hyeon Un with calm, still eyes.
Just then, Jin Seongun walked into the inn.
Hyeon Un asked, "Seongun, my boy. Did you know about this?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is thaaat so?"
The chopstick withdrew a very slight distance from his throat. Hyeon Un's expression grew complicated.
"So it wasn't ordinary murderous intent after all."
What is the Heavenly Killing Star?
Those born with blood already staining their fate.
Throughout the whole of murim history, countless bloodbaths were wrought by precisely these bearers of the star.
To be exact, nearly every bearer of the Heavenly Killing Star inevitably brings about a bloodbath—for that nature and destiny is what they were born with in the first place.
And so, from ancient times, it had been considered a virtue to kill anyone found bearing the star on the spot, regardless of age.
Hyeon Un took in both Seo Yugyeom and Jin Seongun in a single glance and sank deep into thought.
Within this little inn dwell both the Heavenly Martial Body and the Heavenly Killing Star—two souls who will become the great history of this era.
That he himself, an elder of the Wudang Sect, had drifted to this place—perhaps that too was heaven's will.
Then which was his mandate: to kill the star-bearer and erase him, or to help this ill-fated child?
While Hyeon Un wrestled with the question, Seo Yugyeom spoke in a tone calmer than ever.
"If you're going to kill me here, don't eat the noodles I made. Even you should have that much of a conscience."
Hyeon Un's gaze drifted to the bowl of noodles.
Today of all days, the broth looked exceptionally pale and clear—truly a tempting sight to behold.