You Shouldn't Mess Up an Inn
Someone had to keep the inn tidy, after all.
Everyone was stunned by Jin Seongun's sudden move.
One man spat out the noodles he'd been eating, while the quicker-witted ones slunk to their feet and slipped out of the inn one by one.
The warriors of the Saryong River Gang stared at Jin Seongun, trying to gauge his martial prowess, and the man who'd just been sent flying by a slap to the cheek could only blink, dumbstruck.
Most shocked of all was Seo Yugyeom. Jin Seongun rarely pulled stunts like this.
In any case, every eye in the room was fixed on him.
Jin Seongun himself remained perfectly composed. He crouched down and gathered the spilled food onto a plate. One edge of the plate had chipped away, but the shape still held, so it served well enough.
Once the food was collected, he took the cloth hanging by the kitchen and wiped down the table, then mopped up the spilled wine from the floor with a rag until not a trace remained.
Through that entire sequence, not a single person dared to interrupt him. Instinct kept them all rooted in place.
Before long, Jin Seongun finished tidying up and muttered, almost to himself,
"……You shouldn't mess up an inn."
Then he glanced at the innkeeper and added,
"And you shouldn't hit your elders, either."
Confusion was written plain across every face. The man had marched up, slapped someone across the face, and was now cleaning. Naturally, they were at a loss.
Seo Yugyeom, for his part, couldn't suppress a laugh, because to him Jin Seongun's behavior was entirely justified. Jin Seongun was a waiter, after all.
To a waiter, cleaning was as natural as eating breakfast in the morning and dinner in the evening.
The Saryong River Gang warriors exchanged glances.
Black Way thugs hated unpredictability — especially the ones with the least skill to back themselves up.
Men sent to shake down an inn for debt were hardly going to be masters of the blade.
Unable to get any measure of Jin Seongun's strength, they were now conducting a fierce argument entirely through their eyes.
'Let's just leave. That man's insane.'
'Nonsense! If we back down now, the Saryong River Gang's name is mud.'
'Then you go first, brother.'
'……'
Conversations along those lines were exchanged in perfect silence. Before long, Jin Seongun finished cleaning, helped the innkeeper back to his feet, and asked,
"Innkeeper. Are you all right?"
"……I'm fine, but—"
The owner of the Deokyang Inn let his words trail off. Now was hardly the time to worry about him.
Who were these men? The Saryong River Gang — one of the Four Great Black Way Factions of Deokyang.
In Deokyang, no one dared treat them lightly. Not officials, not the wealthy. No one.
There were even rumors that even the Hwaun Merchant Group was powerless against the Four Great Black Ways.
Unlike the trembling innkeeper, Jin Seongun remained unfailingly calm. Had he ever feared the Black Ways, he would never have slaughtered the Prosperity Association to the last man.
"You bastard!"
Someone shouted at the top of his lungs.
Jin Seongun flicked the water from his hands and regarded him. A fairly burly man — the oldest-looking of the group, it seemed.
"What seems to be the problem?"
At Jin Seongun's placid reply, the big man's face twisted in disbelief. He drew the blade at his hip. At the sight, the last few customers still lingering bolted for the door.
Jin Seongun clicked his tongue as he watched them flee. Customers running out was the worst possible outcome for anyone running an inn — he hadn't even collected payment yet.
He turned to the innkeeper and said,
"I'll cover the bill."
It was pickpocket money anyway.
The innkeeper just looked at him. What else was there to say? His fear of the Saryong River Gang ran far too deep.
Meanwhile, the big man — feeling thoroughly disrespected — bellowed out,
"Do you even know who we are?"
"Heard it earlier. The Saryong River Gang, wasn't it?"
That had been what the insolent young man, slathered in hongsoruyuk sauce, had said as he stomped on the innkeeper.
It hadn't been a question that expected an answer, but now that Jin Seongun had given one, the man found himself momentarily at a loss for words.
So this time, Jin Seongun asked instead.
"Why do you beat a man who's simply trying to make an honest living, and pour his wine and food all over the floor?"
The Black Way thugs wore blank expressions for a moment. In all their lives, no one had ever asked them that.
People rarely questioned why Black Way thugs did what they did. Beating people, extorting money, raising hell — those were simply what the Black Ways did. It went without saying.
As the foolish silence stretched on, someone offered the most essential answer of all.
"Because we're the Black Ways?"
Jin Seongun nodded, thinking it a remarkably lucid answer. He rather liked the offhand honesty of it.
"I see. So we each have our work to do."
And how strange it was.
He felt something inside him settle, clear and light.
Jin Seongun had actually wondered, briefly, whether intervening in this affair had been a mistake.
He was a man who would eventually leave, while the innkeeper would remain here forever. But that dilemma had just come to an end.
Watching the innkeeper being beaten down helplessly by Black Way thugs, Jin Seongun had thought of so many people.
The owners and cooks of the rough inns where he'd worked as a waiter, the merchants, the father who'd brought his child along, the scholar heading off to the civil exams to lift his family up, the farmer draining a cup of wine with dirt-caked hands.
And the Black Way thugs who tormented them all, for a hundred different reasons.
"Good. Then let's each do our jobs."
With that, Jin Seongun strode forward. He weaved smoothly between the Black Way men, who still had their blades half-drawn.
The thugs gaped at him like idiots. Even Seo Yugyeom found himself wondering what Jin Seongun would do next.
Jin Seongun walked all the way to the door — and closed it. In an instant, the inn grew a shade darker.
A brief silence fell.
Then Jin Seongun looked back at the Black Way men and said,
"I'll get back to cleaning, then. You men go about your business."
With those words, he flicked a glance at Seo Yugyeom. Seo Yugyeom, who had already broken into a grin, rose from his seat as though the moment he'd been waiting for had finally arrived.
Scrape — the sound of a chair dragging across the floor made the Black Way men flinch and whirl around.
But Seo Yugyeom was gone. A chill ran up the men's spines.
"Wh-where did he—"
Then it happened.
Thud — the wet sound of something being punched through echoed across the room.
The men whipped their heads toward the source. A comrade who had been eating with them barely an hour ago was spraying blood from his throat.
The man stared at them with empty, unfocused eyes — then simply came apart.
Crash—!
The thud of a body hitting the wooden floor rang out, heavy and dull. And Seo Yugyeom was not there either.
Only his voice drifted out of thin air.
"The waiter cleans, the cook cooks…"
The warriors wavered badly. But they couldn't just stand there gaping. Someone shrieked in desperation,
"F-fight them!"
It was the oldest man among them.
The Black Way warriors clenched their blades and threw themselves forward. They might measure an opponent before a fight began, but once blades were drawn, only one task remained.
Besides, these were men who had rolled in the Black Ways their whole lives.
Several of them rushed straight at Jin Seongun. The man who'd taken that first slap and the sauce-dousing was charging headlong, his face scarlet with rage.
"You f—ing bastard!"
Jin Seongun watched them come with quiet eyes. Their expressions were grim and desperate, truly.
But to Jin Seongun, they hardly registered as a threat. Frankly, they looked about on par with the now-vanished Prosperity Association.
Only one question lingered. How could a Black Way faction that employed thugs of this caliber have shaken one of the Ten Great Merchant Groups of the Central Plains?
While he was still mulling it over, the fastest runner of the lot was already upon him, blade sweeping down.
Jin Seongun raised the dish cloth with both hands, stretching it taut. It looked for all the world as if he meant to block a sword with a rag, and the Black Way man's face split into a sneer.
He brought his blade down with full force, intending to cleave through the cloth — and Jin Seongun's skull along with it.
The instant steel met cloth —
The man experienced something uncanny. The fabric of the dish cloth wrapped around his blade as firmly as if it had transformed into a mesh of iron.
There was no time for admiration.
He yanked desperately at his sword. Nothing. As he strained against it, Jin Seongun drove a kick into his belly and sent him flying.
A decent swordsman never lets go of his blade. But this man was far from decent. Jin Seongun caught the sword he'd dropped.
At the same moment, Jin Seongun's presence shifted once more.
The charging men faltered mid-stride.
Jin Seongun was simply holding a sword, lightly. That was all it took. Such was the disciple of the Sword Immortal.
He gazed at the men for a brief moment, then rolled his foot forward almost lazily.
The distance closed in a blink, and the men's blades surged at him all at once.
Jin Seongun moved with unhurried ease, parrying one blade after another, slipping his sword into the gaps whenever an opening appeared.
And each time, one man died. Jin Seongun was confident he could have cut them all down with a single stroke. He had chosen this kind of fight regardless.
The reason was simple. Killing them all in one stroke would have left a gruesome scene. For the innkeeper — no martial artist — it would have been unbearable to witness.
Jin Seongun's sword killed the men very quietly. Each time it thrust out, a man died with a small puncture in a vital point, and nothing more.
Thanks to that, not much blood was spilled. Astonishingly, through the entire fight, not a single wall, table, or chair in the inn suffered so much as a crack.
Around that time, those facing Seo Yugyeom rather than Jin Seongun were faring much the same.
The only difference was that they still hadn't laid eyes on him at all.
A scream would tear the air, someone would turn their head — and a comrade would be lying dead. The lowly thugs of the Saryong River Gang had no way whatsoever to track the movements of a special-grade assassin of Salmak.
The fight did not last long.
Truthfully, it hardly deserved to be called a fight.
Jin Seongun tossed the bloodied sword to the floor.
Looking at them, he realized something: all those years as a waiter had built up quite a store of anger inside him.
Life at the Seongun Inn in Yichang had been peaceful, mostly. The Prosperity Association — a Black Way outfit — had been wiped out completely, and a merchant association led by Oh Jeong-san had taken root in its place.
Which meant it had been a very long time since he'd last watched Black Way thugs run rampant in an inn. From the way they'd mentioned debts, these men were presumably loan sharks.
The very worst kind of Black Way vermin. The King of Hell's Debt. Usury — it gnawed away at a person's mind with meticulous, vicious patience.
And the accusation that you shouldn't have borrowed in the first place never applied.
"How did you end up owing them, innkeeper?"
At Jin Seongun's question, the innkeeper hesitated, then spoke.
"It wasn't me. It was my son. They lured him into a gambling den, let him run up a tab playing their crooked games, and then hit him with the debt at the worst possible moment."
The innkeeper's tone had changed somewhere along the way. Naturally — after what he'd just witnessed.
His story was the classic playbook of loan sharks. The gambling den, too, would have had Black Way thugs embedded in it.
He hadn't borrowed. He'd been made to borrow.
"And your son?"
"……They beat him so badly he can barely walk now."
Hook people like fish, then bleed them dry of money. It worked even better if the family had money to begin with.
Threaten, intimidate, cajole, soothe — then threaten again — extracting money the way one plucks strands from a spider's web, slowly and carefully.
There was no way out. The men acted with cold, calculated thoroughness. The innkeeper would keep bringing them money until his body gave out entirely.
Only now did Jin Seongun understand why he worked alone.
He nodded as if he understood. Then he turned to Seo Yugyeom, who was breathing slowly and with visible effort, fighting to keep his killing intent leashed.
"Sir Seo. I'll need to pay a visit to the Saryong River Gang."
It was a notification, and a question at once.
The reason Jin Seongun was heading there was personal. He had no right to press Seo Yugyeom into coming along.
Seo Yugyeom let out a long, deep breath. It seemed as though killing intent leaked out with the exhale.
"Then I'm coming too. This works out fine, actually."
According to the pickpocket, the Saryong River Gang was one of the Four Great Black Ways of Deokyang. It would inevitably be tangled up with the affairs of the Hwaun Merchant Group.
He wasn't ready to go to the merchant group yet. It wasn't merely the place where he'd spent his childhood — it was where Seo Yugyeom's misery had begun, and the source of his killing intent still dwelled there.
But he needed to know what was happening at the merchant group.
Tucking the Heavenly Killing Short Knife into his clothes, Seo Yugyeom said to Jin Seongun, who was waiting for his answer,
"Rich bastards like that have got to eat well, right?"
"Probably so."
"Good. We'll eat there, then."
Jin Seongun nodded and set the money pouch he'd pulled from his coat onto an empty table. It would be more than enough to cover the food.
He spoke to the innkeeper, who still wore a bewildered expression.
"One day should be enough."
The innkeeper had no idea what those words meant.
Oblivious or not, Jin Seongun opened the inn's door and stepped outside. The light streaming through the open doorway fell starkly across the final image of the Black Way men, illuminating it without mercy.