The Thousand Poisons Alliance
Thousand Poisons Alliance
"Enemies!"
At that hackneyed cry, the warriors of the Saryonggang Gang came swarming in.
Jin Seongun rose from his seat and calmly observed them.
He had felt it the whole time, and sure enough, something was off.
They're far too weak.
They were roughly on par with the now-vanished Prosperity Society. Deokyang had never been a particularly large city to begin with, but any force capable of hounding one of the Ten Great Merchant Groups, the Hwaun Merchant Group, ought to have been far more formidable than this.
He had even drawn up a contingency plan—if the fight turned against them, he and Seo Yugyeom would bolt together.
"Seo the Young Hero, doesn't something strike you as strange here?"
At Jin Seongun's question, Seo Yugyeom nodded with an equally grave expression.
The Hwaun Merchant Group was, at its heart, a collective of merchants, but it also maintained its own armed retinue. How could black-path rabble of this caliber ever have pressed such an organization to the brink?
Seo Yugyeom briefly wondered whether the merchant group's strength had been gutted because of him—because he had killed their previous caravan leader.
Meanwhile, the warriors crept toward the two men, blades extended, shuffling step by reluctant step.
The two reached a decision.
They would have to meet the gang's leader first and hear him out.
"We've come to see the Gang Leader."
Jin Seongun declared his purpose boldly and without ceremony.
The Saryonggang warriors stared at him as one might stare at a lunatic.
Oblivious or indifferent, Jin Seongun took one step forward, then another. With each step, the warriors scuttled two steps back, painting a rather absurd picture.
"……"
Jin Seongun wore an expression of rare bewilderment. If a force like this could shake the Hwaun Merchant Group, then every armed collective under heaven might as well take its turn.
"You worthless scum! What in the hell do you think you're doing!"
A roar suddenly erupted from behind the warriors.
Their retreating steps froze at once.
Jin Seongun looked past them at the man standing there. Average height, average build, the sort of middle-aged face one might pass a hundred times on any market street.
The one remarkable thing was that his eyes were absolutely stuffed full of stubbornness.
How curious.
Every loan shark Jin Seongun had ever laid eyes on wore exactly that look.
They say that past forty, a man's life shows on his face. You are born with the face your parents gave you, but as the years wear on, your obsessions and temperament carve themselves into it.
Men who gnawed relentlessly and viciously at other people's lives, it seemed, all lived thinking roughly the same thoughts.
And so they all went through the world wearing that same obstinate, ill-natured face.
"Are you the Gang Leader?"
Even at Jin Seongun's question, the man only snorted. Then, berating his retreating underlings, he shouted:
"From this moment, any man who takes so much as one more step backward, I will kill with my own hands. And whoever forces those two down onto their knees before me gets forty nyang of silver."
The light in the warriors' eyes changed instantly.
Well, of course—men who chose to work for the Saryonggang among all the black-path factions out there were, by definition, rather fond of money.
Even within the unorthodox world, the King of Hell's loan trade was one of the most despised professions there was.
Jin Seongun asked with complete sincerity:
"Forty nyang of gold, you mean?"
"……"
The presumed Gang Leader's mouth clamped shut.
When his men began glancing sideways at him, he looked thoroughly flustered.
"Ah, he must be a benefactor. Still, even so, that's no small sum. The Gang Leader is generous indeed."
Jin Seongun launched straight into praising him.
He meant it, more or less, but the mention of gold seemed to have drained a little of the fight out of the warriors.
The whole spectacle was apparently too much for Seo Yugyeom, who snorted and said:
"Gang Leader, we told you we came to pay our debt. So why are you suddenly drawing steel and spouting nonsense?"
"What fool in this world comes to repay a debt by smashing down a man's front gate?!"
"Oh-ho."
The Gang Leader had rebutted in a perfectly reasonable manner. But Seo Yugyeom was, by nature, a man built for verbal brawls.
"You people smash down other folks' doors and walls when you come collecting money. What's stopping us from doing the same?"
"……"
The Gang Leader seemed to have nothing left to say. He coughed awkwardly, weighed his options for a moment, and then gave the order.
"Attack."
At once, several warriors lunged forward—men whose greed for forty nyang of silver had conquered their terror of death.
Jin Seongun watched the greedy souls for a heartbeat, then swept his arm out in a single arc. It was no profound martial art of the murim. He simply unleashed the internal energy of the Yeowol Mind Art through the strike.
BOOOOOM—!
The five warriors charging at the front were flung backward through the air. They vomited blood, twitched for a few moments, and then went utterly limp.
"……"
Silence fell.
It was the instant when the fear of death crushed all greed for forty nyang of silver, completely and utterly.
Jin Seongun strode forward, step by unhurried step.
His trademark deadpan expression, layered atop the display of martial prowess they had just witnessed, planted a deep terror in the warriors' hearts.
Wherever his feet fell, men scattered left and right. Following the path the warriors cleared for him, Jin Seongun arrived at last before the Gang Leader himself.
The Saryonggang leader was glaring at him with venomous eyes. Fortunately or unfortunately, he seemed to possess rather more nerve than his underlings.
"Gang Leader. We've come to settle a debt. It so happens I killed a few of your men. I left Hong Xiaoyu waiting for ages, and just as the food came out, your people burst in and dumped the whole meal on the floor."
"They spilled the Yanghe Daqu too. It was shocking."
Seo Yugyeom added from the side.
Yang Cheondek, leader of the Saryonggang, had the distinct feeling that he had hooked something very wrong indeed. The two of them looked, from every angle, like lunatics. The problem was that they were lunatics of the master-class variety.
The most dangerous creatures in the world were precisely these kinds of men. It was the same reason the whole world feared the Demonic Cult.
Yang Cheondek had met plenty of madmen in his life. Living in the black path, one inevitably did.
With such men, attempting to predict or analyze anything was pointless.
So he asked outright:
"What is it you want?"
"First, we'll need to eat."
It was Seo Yugyeom who answered.
Yang Cheondek nodded readily enough.
Just avoiding a fight on the spot made this a decent outcome by any measure.
Relieved, Yang Cheondek stole a glance at his underlings. His dignity as their chief seemed to be eroding by the minute, so he appended a remark for appearance's sake.
"If you had a grievance, you could have come and talked it out like civilized men. Why smash down another man's gate?"
This was not submission. It was not fear. It was simply that the two men seemed to share some unspoken understanding at first sight, and so he was willing to settle things with words.
He made a show of as magnanimous an attitude as he could manage. The Saryonggang warriors, naturally, wore sour expressions throughout.
"We would have, but the bald one at the front gate took a swing at us out of nowhere, so."
"Ah, that fool. Is he dead, by chance?"
"Regrettably, yes."
"I was planning to kill him tomorrow anyway. You've spared me the labor, so consider a meal my treat, gladly given."
Jin Seongun nodded.
The Saryonggang leader, it turned out, was a far more reasonable man than expected.
The three men sat facing one another in the Gang Leader's office.
Given the staggering scale of the compound, the office itself was extravagantly appointed. A round table in one corner had been laden with wine and food. The presence of Hong Xiaoyu and the Yanghe Daqu on that table spoke, in its own way, of the Gang Leader's sincerity.
Just as Jin Seongun lifted his chopsticks, Seo Yugyeom spoke up.
"This could be poisoned. I was planning to eat here originally, but one look at the Gang Leader's dog-ugly face and I can't shake the suspicion. Can't do it."
Jin Seongun set his chopsticks back down.
Yang Cheondek choked inwardly, but he knew this was no time to lose his temper.
"……There's no poison. I am, after all, the chief of a black-path organization—how could I stoop to anything so cowardly?"
"The King of Hell's loans are a cowardly enterprise to begin with, Gang Leader."
At that whip-crack of a remark, Seo Yugyeom gasped in admiration and thrust up his thumb.
Yang Cheondek's beard trembled faintly. It was one of those moments when he rather regretted neglecting his martial training.
But he had spent the time he might have spent on the blade making money instead, and soon enough these fools would bow to money anyway—so it hardly mattered.
Oblivious or indifferent, Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom touched neither wine nor food and simply stared at Yang Cheondek.
A chill was creeping up the Gang Leader's spine, though he did his best not to show it.
"A shame. I went to the trouble of preparing all this."
"The food your underlings dumped on the floor was prepared with someone's hard work too, so let's call it even."
"……"
Seo Yugyeom thrust his thumb up again.
Now that he looked at it, this Jin Seongun fellow seemed to be the type whose tongue turned razor-sharp in front of black-path thugs.
Which was only natural. Jin Seongun had worked as a waiter for well over ten years by rough count. He had accumulated no small reserve of feeling toward black-path warriors in that time.
"Gang Leader. There's something I'd like to ask."
Yang Cheondek, midway through filling his cup, looked up at him. The look said go ahead and ask, so Jin Seongun continued in an easy tone.
"Why is the Saryonggang so weak?"
"……"
Yang Cheondek's stomach churned all over again.
But he needed to stall for at least half a sijin, so he forced a reply.
"What nonsense is this? We may be King of Hell's lenders and great black-path villains, but we are, properly speaking, one of the Four Great Black Paths of Deokyang."
"Then are the other three around the Saryonggang's level?"
"Well, roughly, yes."
"So the Saryonggang is the weakest of the lot."
"……"
Jin Seongun knew the rhetorical habits of black-path men well. They were braggarts by nature—so the moment one of them acknowledged an opponent as an equal, he was, in effect, confessing that he himself was the weaker party.
"Did you come all this way just to sit me down and insult me? Was it because my men spoiled your meal and that displeased you?"
"We came partly for that. I despise the black path in general, and the King of Hell's loan trade in particular."
"What a tragedy. But we run our money rather humanely, you know. We don't go killing people just because they can't repay."
"You burst into our establishment out of nowhere, knocked things over, trampled everything, and dumped out our food."
"You hold a grudge, don't you? Look—when a man won't pay back what he owes, he can hardly complain about taking a few blows. How else are we supposed to dig our living out of the dirt?"
The more he spoke, the more his anger kept surging up. Yet Jin Seongun's demeanor remained placid throughout. There was still one question that refused to let him go.
"Word has it the Hwaun Merchant Group is in crisis at the moment."
"……"
Yang Cheondek's eyes changed in an instant.
That reaction told Jin Seongun everything. The Saryonggang was involved in the Hwaun affair in some fashion. Which meant the other three black paths of Deokyang were surely the same.
"But that's exactly what I can't make sense of. The Saryonggang's strength is honestly laughable. Even if the other three are stronger, I doubt it's by any overwhelming margin—otherwise your gang would never have survived this long."
"……"
"So how, exactly, does a pack of black-path thugs like you manage to seize and shake a merchant group the size of the Hwaun?"
Even Seo Yugyeom, who had only half-followed the conversation until now, sharpened his gaze at that question.
Depending on Yang Cheondek's answer, the two of them would decide how to act.
"Who's been saying we seized and shook the Hwaun Merchant Group?"
"Some merchant acquaintances mentioned it."
"I see. You two are murim men, then?"
"We might be, or might not be. Kindly just answer what you're asked."
Yang Cheondek studied the two of them again. They weren't mere madmen after all—they had come with some purpose in mind.
And anything touching on the Hwaun Merchant Group demanded the utmost caution. The decades-old grievance of Deokyang's black paths was on the very verge of being settled at last.
Yang Cheondek affected composure, raised his cup to his lips, and quietly chose his words.
Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom did not press him further.
Before long, Yang Cheondek set down his cup and spoke in a grim, resolute tone unlike anything before.
"It is the will of the Thousand Poisons Alliance."
Now, at last, it made sense.
Why black paths as feeble as these could bring the Hwaun Merchant Group to its knees.
Why no other powerful gangs and alliances from outside had meddled in this affair.
Even Jin Seongun, who knew little of murim history, recognized the faction that had just been named.
The Thousand Poisons Alliance.
Nothing less than the hegemon of Sichuan's unorthodox world.
Sichuan Province was home to several illustrious orthodox sects—the Mount Emei Sect and the Qingcheng Sect among them.
And yet the Alliance had gathered the black paths under its banner and held its power together—which meant its strength fell short of nothing, not even the great orthodox sects.
"So you'd best withdraw while you can. If you kill me here, who do you suppose you'll be fighting next?"
Yang Cheondek looked at the two men with a knowing, self-satisfied smile.
Now that he had revealed the Thousand Poisons Alliance at his back, he was certain they would lose their nerve.
"……"
But no matter how long he waited, neither man's attitude shifted in the slightest.
Seo Yugyeom didn't flinch because he was a former special-grade assassin of Salmak; Jin Seongun didn't flinch because that was simply how he was.
Jin Seongun prodded idly at the Hong Xiaoyu for a moment, then asked Yang Cheondek:
"How strong is the Leader of the Thousand Poisons Alliance?"
"……"
Yang Cheondek had never heard such a question in his life. When he failed to answer for a moment, Jin Seongun asked again.
"If it's difficult to answer directly, compare him to someone. Say, someone from the Tang Clan... now, what was his name."
As Jin Seongun furrowed his brow, Seo Yugyeom cut in.
"The Poison Lord?"
"Ah, that's the one. Compared to the Poison Lord, would the Alliance Leader happen to be stronger?"
The Poison Lord was Grand Elder Dang Taesan of the Sichuan Tang Clan—the man who had come sprinting in haste to rescue Young Clan Leader Tang Soyeon during the Sikmugaek affair.
Yang Cheondek, who had been preening so grandly at the mere mention of the Thousand Poisons Alliance's leader, went white as a fresh coat of paint the moment the Sichuan Tang Clan entered the conversation.
Such was the weight the Tang Clan's name carried here in Sichuan.