The Greatest Merchant Guild in History
Hyun Woon's deliberation stretched on and on.
Should he help Seo Yugyeom break free of his murderous impulses — or should he cut down the Heavenly Killing Star, a man all too likely to become the next Great Blade Chief, right here at this table?
All he had to do was push the chopsticks in his hand a little deeper, and this era's Heavenly Killing Star would be dead.
Perhaps that single decision might save the lives of tens, even hundreds of people in the days to come.
And he was wrestling with this momentous, life-or-death dilemma while staring into a bowl of noodles. It wasn't because Seo Yugyeom had told him not to eat another bite if he intended to kill him.
He was simply remembering all the food he had been served at Seongun Inn, free of charge and without a word of complaint.
"Elder."
At Jin Seongun's call, Hyun Woon raised his head and met his eyes. Jin Seongun said nothing more. He simply looked at him, quiet and steady.
More than any words could have, the message came through. Jin Seongun hoped Hyun Woon would not kill Seo Yugyeom.
Hyun Woon's chopsticks drifted a little further away.
Tell me of the martial arts you have mastered.
Hyun Woon asked Seo Yugyeom in a transmitted voice, for Seomun Ak was seated at the table.
Revealing one's cultivated techniques was tantamount to laying bare one's weaknesses. Even so, Seo Yugyeom answered readily — not in a transmitted voice, but aloud.
"In my youth, I learned the Three Talents Mind Method and the Three Talents Sword Method at the Hwaun Merchant Group. Afterward, at Salmak, I trained in the Dark Slaughter Heart Art as my foundation, along with the Heavenly Slaughter Blade Method, Moon Shadow Steps, Lacquer Night Palm, the Great Turtle-Breath Method, Flashing Lightning Flight, and the Formless Soul-Seizing Finger."
"Heoh."
A long, long sigh followed.
Seo Yugyeom was already thick with killing intent by nature, thanks to the Heavenly Killing Star he'd been born under. And Salmak had taught a man like that nothing but techniques steeped in murder.
They had evidently wanted to turn him into a killing machine, plain and simple.
"It is a mercy, at least, that you trained in the Three Talents Mind Method."
The Three Talents Mind Method and the Three Talents Sword Method.
Common techniques that could be bought for a few coppers in any back-alley market.
There had been occasional rumors that mastering the Three Talents Sword Method to its extreme could produce an absolute master, but Hyun Woon at least had never heard of such a case.
The reason Hyun Woon considered it a mercy was that the Three Talents Arts were martial techniques the Sword Immortal of the Daoist school had personally created for the sake of the common folk.
The martial arts of the Daoist and Buddhist paths were, at their root, imbued with the energies of demon-subduing and evil-breaking.
"From this moment, memorize the formulas I am about to speak."
Hyun Woon began reciting the formulas in a transmitted voice.
To teach the Wudang Sect's mind method to an outsider was, by all tradition, an impossibility……
But this, too, is the will of the Heaven-Exalted.
Calling to mind the same rationalization he used whenever he drank wine and ate meat, Hyun Woon continued reciting the formulas without pause.
"Have you memorized them all?"
"I have."
"Recite them back to me."
Seo Yugyeom repeated the formulas he had just committed to memory — this time in a transmitted voice, of course, since they belonged to another sect's arts.
Hyun Woon nodded, looking quite satisfied.
"Your faculties are certainly exceptional. The method is not so profound, yet committing it to memory in a single sitting would have been beyond most. When your killing heart grows too deep, or slips beyond your control, call upon the method I have taught you."
Hyun Woon hoped his judgment was right.
Teaching a Wudang art to an outsider — and sparing the Heavenly Killing Star.
Had it been the man he once was, he would never have done either. And yet Hyun Woon had resolved to help Seo Yugyeom.
Whether it was because of all the food the man had fed him, or because he had already grown fond of Seo Yugyeom himself, he could not say.
Or perhaps it was simply his trust in Jin Seongun.
As Hyun Woon released a small sigh along with these thoughts —
Seo Yugyeom raised his internal energy and attempted to circulate the mind method he had just learned. Then, mid-breath, he stopped and asked:
"By the way — what is the name of this method?"
Seo Yugyeom's speech had shifted into formal register. Now that he had accepted instruction, however small, he could hardly keep talking down to the man.
At this show of courtesy, Hyun Woon answered with a pleased expression.
"It is called the Pure Yang Limitless Art."
"Pure…… Yang."
Seo Yugyeom's eyes narrowed.
A chill ran up his spine in an instant.
"Pure Yang — isn't that the sort of name usually attached to Boy Arts? The kind you train before your voice even drops?"
Hyun Woon nodded, then stared at him blankly, his face a picture of and what of it?
Seo Yugyeom was seized by the urge to draw his blade. Seeing that expression, Hyun Woon spoke.
"Now! Now is the moment — circulate the mind method!"
"……I have only just passed my twentieth year. It feels strange even to say this, but I have never once known the love of a woman."
Seo Yugyeom had never loved. In his assassin days he had played the part of a lover to get close to female masters, but he had never once held a sincere heart for anyone.
His life had never afforded him the luxury in the first place.
"All the better, then. Learn it before you come to know love, and you will master the Pure Yang Limitless Art all the more smoothly."
"Old man."
"Yes? What is it."
Hyun Woon answered with perfect shamelessness. Seo Yugyeom understood what the man was worried about, but still……
"Fear not. I have lived alone into my sixties, and I must say — it is hardly so bad."
Those words stirred Seo Yugyeom's heart all the more violently.
When he looked at the old man before him and saw his own future, the darkness closed in even further.
"……There isn't another way?"
"Well, if Boy Arts do not suit you, there is always the Heartless Art."
Seo Yugyeom pressed a hand to his forehead.
Boy Arts would bar him from ever holding a woman for the rest of his life — and the Heartless Art would simply make him a eunuch.
Seo Yugyeom turned to Jin Seongun.
Can't you just kill him?
His eyes said exactly that.
Jin Seongun shook his head.
It's not as if I could, even if I wanted to.
So did his.
For the first time in his life, Seo Yugyeom felt helplessness. Had Hyun Woon not been a master who had reached the Transcendental Realm, the old man would already have been laid out flat on the floor.
While Seo Yugyeom trembled with rage, Hyun Woon carried on as if it were nothing.
"Or else — go and see the Hwaun Merchant Group."
"What are you talking about, all of a sudden?"
"I hear you have suppressed your killing heart to some degree all this while. Am I wrong?"
"You are not."
"And yet your fight with Sikmugaek cracked that control, and the matter of the Hwaun Merchant Group and your sister set it raging. The first step to healing a wound of the heart is to face its cause squarely. Sikmugaek is already dead — so go to the Hwaun Merchant Group, and at least see your sister."
Seo Yugyeom's eyes sank low.
He had never thought of seeing his sister again. Or rather — it would be more accurate to say he had not been able to.
He lacked the courage. He could not be certain what he would feel if he stood before her.
He was afraid a sudden surge of rage might drive him to kill her — and afraid an unbearable flood of sorrow might drive him to kill himself.
Hyun Woon looked him dead in the eye as he spoke.
"A man who gambled his life against Sikmugaek — what could frighten him so much that he hesitates like this? Go. Go, and do as you wish."
"I don't know what it is I wish to do."
"If you don't know, then no one in this world does."
"Hmmm."
Letting out a low groan, Seo Yugyeom rose from his seat. The old man was right. A rambling, wine-soaked fool he might be, but there was a reason he was an elder of Wudang.
To that retreating figure, Hyun Woon added one more thing.
"When it gets bad, circulate the method I taught you. Honestly — what's a little Boy Art got to do with anything?"
"……It won't come to that."
And with that, Seo Yugyeom left the table.
Hyun Woon watched his back with something like amusement before finally picking up his chopsticks. As the reward for his bold decision, he could at last eat his noodles.
……
The conversation had dragged on so long that the noodles had gone completely soggy.
That night.
Seo Yugyeom coated his Heavenly Killing Short Saber with ink and oil.
It was a trick assassins had long favored for hiding their blades in the dark.
Gathering up the blackened saber and a few strips of dried meat, he made his way to Jin Seongun's quarters.
Jin Seongun, as though he had known all along that Seo Yugyeom would come, naturally set water boiling for tea and asked:
"So you've made up your mind?"
"I have. I have to go. In the end, I'm the one who killed the previous leader of the Hwaun Merchant Group — so I feel some measure of responsibility, too."
Seo Yugyeom had killed the leader of the Hwaun Merchant Group, and her inexperienced daughter had become the new head of the guild.
And so the Hwaun Merchant Group had been plunged into crisis. Rough, unscrupulous men of the Dark Dao were hardly going to treat a young, green guild leader gently.
Seo Yugyeom felt responsible for that state of affairs.
Jin Seongun gave an easy nod, as if it were nothing.
For a long while, the two of them drank their tea in silence.
When the quiet had stretched long enough, Jin Seongun spoke.
"Let's go together tomorrow morning."
Seo Yugyeom's eyes went round.
At that look, Jin Seongun went on.
"If a valued comrade dies or gets hurt, it means a tremendous loss for Seongun Inn as well."
Jin Seongun's tone was matter-of-fact. His expression was drier still.
And yet Seo Yugyeom felt something surge in his chest. Come to think of it, he had reached this age without ever once experiencing what it was to have someone worry about him.
He had never even seen the faces of the parents who bore him; the adoptive father who took him in had thought only of how to use him. After that, Salmak had taught him nothing but how to kill.
That was not a life. He had lived his entire existence as a tool for someone else.
Only now, coming to Seongun Inn, did Seo Yugyeom realize he had finally become a person.
That was why he could not leave. That was why he was setting out for the Hwaun Merchant Group now.
"But if we both go — what about the inn?"
The kitchen he could leave to Han Seongchun, fine.
But could he really trust Seomun Ak with the rest?
He felt all the more uneasy because a madman like Sikmugaek had once turned up out of nowhere.
"Elder Hyun Woon said he would keep watch while we're gone."
Jin Seongun had already settled everything in advance.
Unlike Seo Yugyeom, who had agonized all day, Jin Seongun and Hyun Woon had evidently assumed all along that he would end up heading for the Hwaun Merchant Group.
Only then did Seo Yugyeom's face ease with relief. With the White Cloud Sword holding down the fort, even a notoriously vicious demonic horde could come knocking and it would be no trouble at all.
Seo Yugyeom broke into a grin.
"Well, then — our first vacation together?"
"It's a business trip that happens to double as one. I hear the region where the Hwaun Merchant Group is based carries Yanghe Daqu, you see."
Yanghe Daqu was one of the finest liquors in all the Central Plains.
It was also the very liquor those two insufferably arrogant merchants had been searching for when they first brought news of the Hwaun Merchant Group.
Even the premium Zhuyeqing had struck Jin Seongun as remarkable — and he was genuinely curious what Yanghe Daqu must taste like for people to dismiss it so casually.
If it proved truly worth drinking, he intended to find some way to stock it at Seongun Inn as well.
"Yanghe Daqu, eh? Good stuff."
"You've had it?"
"Of course. Live long enough as an assassin of Salmak and you play every role there is. Pompous high officials, the degenerate young master of some fabulously rich house — that sort of thing. And the drink you always end up holding in those roles is Yanghe Daqu."
What followed was a remarkably detailed description of its taste.
How the first sip unfolded before your eyes like a vast open plain, how it was so soft it felt like taking a bite out of a cloud……
"Oho."
Jin Seongun's eyes sparkled — a rare sight indeed.
At that, Seo Yugyeom burst out laughing. The truth was, he had never actually tasted Yanghe Daqu himself.
After Seo Yugyeom had gone.
Jin Seongun went straight to the Martial Gods. It was his habit, whenever he was about to leave somewhere, to pay his respects first.
The Martial Gods' space looked as it always did.
A dark void where neither day nor night existed.
Countless stars scattered across distances no eye could measure — and the Martial Gods, standing solitary amid all that emptiness.
"Ah, Seongun has come."
The Sword Immortal spoke without lifting his gaze from the baduk board. His expression was gravely serious — evidently, he was losing to Daji again.
"Yes. Where are the other elders?"
Three of the five were nowhere to be seen. At Jin Seongun's question, Daji smiled sweetly and pointed toward one side.
Jin Seongun's head turned.
There was nothing there but vast, empty blackness.
He raised his internal energy and sharpened his sight. Then, faintly, blurred shapes seemed to appear.
A battle was underway.
Two figures were attacking a single one. Yet the man absorbing their combined assault could not have looked more relaxed.
Then, without warning, something crimson flashed —
and Jin Seongun had no choice but to push his internal energy to its absolute limit. The red explosion that had begun as a single point swelled at a terrifying speed, until it swallowed the entire vast space whole.
KWAAAAAAA—!
It was like watching a tidal wave made of pure blood come rolling in.
Just before that enormous force reached Jin Seongun, the Sword Immortal — still staring fixedly at the baduk board — gave a casual flick of his hand.
And the onrushing crimson tide split apart around the spot where Jin Seongun, Daji, and the Sword Immortal stood.
Amid a force that was devouring the whole of space, the small pocket where the three of them sat remained perfectly still.
After one barrage of qi poured down and faded away —
the three men came trudging over, dragging their feet.
The faces of the Merchant King and the Divine Thief were chalk-white; they had plainly lost to the Blood Demon.
"Ah. Seongun's here, is he."
the Merchant King said in a worn-out voice.
Jin Seongun greeted the three of them with a light cupped-fist salute.
"Nothing unusual happening, I trust?"
"I'll need to be away for a little while."
So saying, Jin Seongun glanced sideways at the Blood Demon. The lingering echo of the single strike the man had unleashed still burned faintly on his skin.
The Blood Demon gave him one brief look, then, as always, lay back down to stare up into the void.
Just how strong was that man? And for what reason did he dwell here? Such thoughts flickered briefly through Jin Seongun's mind, but this hardly seemed the moment to ask.
Having caught his breath for a moment, the Merchant King asked with a somewhat restored complexion:
"Where are you off to?"
Jin Seongun told him everything concerning the Hwaun Merchant Group, and the Merchant King let out a small sigh.
"Endless trouble for one little inn. If it concerns the heart of the inn — its cook — then it is only right that you go yourself."
It was the same reaction he had shown when the matter of Seomun Ak came up. A merchant was one who handled money and people — and above all, one who needed the ability to let those beneath him work in peace.
Still looking worse for wear, the Merchant King dropped heavily into his seat and, after a moment's thought, spoke.
"Martial artists have always made a habit of tormenting merchants. It seems the Hwaun Merchant Group has been driven into much the same straits. Of course — it is a problem that can be solved quite simply."
Watching the Merchant King size up the situation in an instant and arrive at a solution before Jin Seongun had even finished explaining, he felt it anew, deep in his bones: this really was the man who had built the greatest merchant guild in the history of the Central Plains.