The Debt Dies With the Debtor
Crash.
"Wh-what was it again? The Blood Demon?"
"You don't know the Blood Demon?"
Seo Yugyeom clicked his tongue. His friend really was hopelessly ignorant when it came to anything related to the martial world.
As they made their way out along the long corridor together, he promised to give a brief rundown on the Blood Demon.
"He's from way back, decades ago. A supreme master of the Demonic Path. And a thoroughly ruthless one at that."
"……"
"They say the number of lives that vanished at his hands runs into the thousands. Sure, that's probably exaggerated. But here's what's certain — the Martial Alliance Leader of that era, dead. The Heavenly Demon Cult Leader, dead. The greatest devil of the Unorthodox factions, dead. Basically, everybody died."
"……That's a frightening man."
Seo Yugyeom's eyes went round.
Live long enough and you'll hear anything, he thought, staring at the man. Even the word 'frightening' coming out of this guy's mouth. His face said exactly that.
Jin Seongun cleared his throat and steered the conversation elsewhere. Any further talk of the Blood Demon, and he'd have trouble keeping his expression in check.
"Anyway, what exactly is the principle behind that formation? Something about the space itself felt wrong."
"I could explain, but you'd have a hard time understanding."
"I'm a man who studied letters on his own even back in my server days."
Jin Seongun bristled, rare for him.
Snickering, Seo Yugyeom gave him a simple rundown of the formation's basic principles. Basic being the operative word…
The focus slowly drained from Jin Seongun's eyes.
Seo Yugyeom gave up on the explanation. The man was perfectly capable of tearing a formation apart with brute force anyway; knowing how formations worked wasn't a prerequisite for staying alive.
"I roughly get it."
"You do?"
"It's just a space that's somehow different from the one we live in. No?"
"……Well, that's true enough."
So much got left out, though.
Seo Yugyeom didn't bother saying it aloud.
But Jin Seongun had genuinely grasped a rough sense of it. He already knew of one such space, after all.
The space where the Martial Gods resided within Seongun Inn.
Jin Seongun called it the Realm of Martial Gods.
For a fleeting moment, the thought crossed his mind — could that realm itself be a kind of formation?
The two of them cut straight through the Saryonggang Gang's compound without catching a single eye. Any master capable of seeing through their concealment wouldn't have been languishing in a backwater dark sect like Saryonggang to begin with.
The moment they were about to slip out, Seo Yugyeom abruptly stopped in his tracks.
"Hold on. There's something I need to check."
He veered off at once.
Ascending the tallest hall in the compound, he took in the whole of Saryonggang with a single sweep of his eyes.
Reading a compound's layout was one of an assassin's specialties. The buildings all looked alike, but to Seo Yugyeom, the purpose of each hall was laid bare.
They wouldn't have kept ledgers that important in the archive…
Then his gaze landed on one particular hall.
Within the fairly spacious compound, the Gang Lord's hall sat at the very back. Only one building lay deeper still.
"There."
Seo Yugyeom flung himself forward without hesitation.
.
.
.
"……"
Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom stood glaring at a single book laid out on the table. A very thick volume — presumably the ledgers dealing with the Hwaun Merchant Group.
"What do we do with it?"
In answer to Jin Seongun's question, Seo Yugyeom tapped the ledger with his index finger.
After a moment's deliberation, he checked its contents. There was no need to read every line, so he flipped through it quickly, skimming as he went.
His expression shifted from moment to moment, until finally it turned positively radiant.
"That bastard died well!"
Going by what was written in this ledger alone, the previous head of the Hwaun Merchant Group had been an absolute son of a bitch. Quietly dispatching rival merchants was the gentlest of his methods; he'd also forcibly saddled entire families with debts, sucked them dry to the very marrow, and ruined them root and branch.
And this had gone on for well over ten years. Long before Seo Yugyeom had ever set foot in the Hwaun Merchant Group.
If this was what he'd done to just the Saryonggang Gang and Hwaun, one could scarcely imagine the extent of his sins against the other three great dark sects.
Privately, Seo Yugyeom concluded he had killed the old merchant group head well. He'd felt no guilt to begin with, but thoughts of his sister had sometimes left an uncomfortable taste in his mouth. Now, though — even if he hadn't killed the man himself, he'd have been cut down by someone's blade eventually, wouldn't he?
"We're taking this one. Burn the rest and let's go."
Jin Seongun nodded, summoned the True Samadhi Fire, and flung it out lightly. He scattered flames in a few spots and poured in his internal energy, and in the blink of an eye the fire swallowed the entire hall.
"F-FIRE! FIRE!"
Frantic shouts rang out from outside.
Plenty of martial artists still remained in the Saryonggang compound.
But with their bodies hidden in the billowing black smoke, no one managed to spot the two men slipping away.
The two washed up in a nearby river and went straight into the Deyu Inn.
At the sight of them returning after only half a day, the innkeeper's jaw dropped.
"Y-you two…"
Ever since they'd left, the innkeeper had felt a persistent, gnawing unease. Whatever else was true, he felt responsible — as if he'd been the one to entangle them with monsters like the Saryonggang Gang.
Worse, the two had declared they were heading for the gang's lair. They certainly looked confident in their martial arts, but Saryonggang was no street gang of alley toughs.
And yet here they were, back after half a day. Spotless, at that.
"You never actually went, did you?"
the innkeeper asked, his voice taut.
Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom gave a vague nod.
"Something like that."
There was no reason to tell the innkeeper everything. Especially with that expression on his face — if they told him the whole truth, his heart would start hammering and he'd be losing sleep for days.
"Are you open for business?"
"Of course. Truth be told, I was too anxious to take customers for a while… but a man's still got to do his work."
Jin Seongun nodded. Merchants who had kept a single shop running for decades always had something to teach.
Noh Sang-won, for instance. Always laughing, always joking around — yet in truth a man whose depth in handling people was anything but ordinary.
Jin Seongun took a seat and spoke.
"Hongshaorou and the Yanghe Daqu, please."
"Give me a moment."
Saying so, the innkeeper brought over cups and a water flask from one side. He'd never been an unfriendly man. Life under the Saryonggang Gang's persecution had simply worn him down into someone curt and prickly.
Before long, the Hongshaorou and Yanghe Daqu arrived. The aroma and presentation were identical to the plates the Saryonggang thug had smashed earlier.
Which was to say — even alone and drowning in work, the man had never stopped caring about his food.
The innkeeper had things he wanted to ask, but held his tongue. In his experience, it was better not to pester young men who came in as customers.
Strike up conversation under the pretense of friendliness, act like you know them — and men like that never came back.
But now.
At the very least, these words had to be said.
"My thanks. The liquor and food are on me."
Years had passed since the Saryonggang Gang first began tormenting him. Naturally, he'd been beaten black and blue more than once by men young enough to be his morning's dawn.
The innkeeper had been a man before he was ever a merchant. Suffering such humiliation in front of others carved deep grooves of shame and degradation into a man.
Martial artists frequented his inn, yet in all that time not a single soul had lifted a finger to help. Such was the weight the Four Great Dark Sects carried here in Deyang.
For the first time, someone had stood up for him. As a merchant, as a person, as a man — he felt it only right to repay at least this much.
Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom, sensing his heart, didn't bother with denials or refusal.
"We'll dig in, then."
That was enough.
Both of them knew it well.
Sure enough, the innkeeper broke into a bright smile and disappeared into the kitchen.
Only then did the two fill their cups.
Glug, glug, glug — with a clear, delicate sound, the liquor rose slowly in the cup.
"Oh…"
Jin Seongun gazed down at the Yanghe Daqu for a moment. To the naked eye, it looked little different from any common baijiu.
Only its distinctive aroma set it apart — an intensity so fierce one might suspect it had whole grains ground straight into it.
The two stared at their cups for a breath, then drank at the same time.
"……!!"
Their eyes went wide together.
Without a spare second to pass judgment, they simultaneously lifted their chopsticks and put the Hongshaorou in their mouths.
One sip was all it took to understand why the Hwaun Merchant Group of Sichuan held an iron monopoly on the Yanghe Daqu, a liquor born of Hebei.
The deep, rich taste of the baijiu married the bold, aggressive flavors of Sichuan cuisine perfectly.
Savoring liquor and meat, Jin Seongun spoke.
"……Let's eat first and talk after."
"Agreed."
By mutual accord, the two shut their mouths and began inhaling food and drink. After all, this was their first proper meal since arriving in Deyang.
They'd picked a pickpocket's pocket the moment they hit town, then walked into an inn only for dark-sect thugs to overturn their liquor and food, and their next meal had been prepared in the dead center of a criminal gang's lair — utterly uneatable.
Come to think of it, a great deal had happened in barely half a day. And nothing in this world was sweeter than a drink earned after the day's work was done.
Seo Yugyeom threw himself into the Hongshaorou, inferring the ingredients and process behind the dish, while Jin Seongun simply lost himself in the flavor and the atmosphere of the inn.
Both of them had just gutted half of a dark-sect gang, and yet at their core they were, respectively, a server and a cook.
The innkeeper, watching them fondly from the kitchen, brought over one more bottle of Yanghe Daqu.
When Jin Seongun moved to pay for it, the innkeeper waved him off.
"I told you, it's my treat."
"Two bottles is a bit much…"
The Yanghe Daqu did not come cheap.
He could feel the man's sincerity, and out of gratitude for the kindness he'd accepted one bottle — but two sat poorly with him.
The innkeeper chuckled.
"What good's your money to me, eh? It'd only end up flowing into those bastards' pockets anyway. Just drink easy and be on your way."
He said it like a joke, but to Jin Seongun, a man who ran a business of his own, the words rang with a bitter, unmistakable truth.
A merchant must make money. The money itself may be the end, or merely the means to something else — it doesn't matter. Only by earning it and achieving something does one truly become a merchant.
Even when the rewards of one's labor are stolen away in their entirety, even when the will drains to nothing, a man must work and work again for the sake of his family.
Jin Seongun had already sized up the innkeeper's condition long ago. From overwork, alone — not one of his ankles, knees, back, wrists, or shoulders remained unruined.
A little later, and he wouldn't have survived the year.
One of his ankles or wrists would have given out completely. The picture that would have unfolded after that was all too predictable.
Unable to work, the man would lose his shop, then his home — perhaps even his family.
Reading the Saryonggang Gang's crimes in that ledger, Jin Seongun knew they were more than capable of trafficking people as well.
Only after stripping him of everything would the gang have let the innkeeper go. That was the nature of a King of Hell loan.
"We'll gratefully accept your hospitality. But this isn't payment for the liquor — just take it."
Jin Seongun pressed the money firmly into the innkeeper's hand.
It wasn't the price of food or drink.
It was for the man's attitude — for the dignity with which he'd shouldered the inn's burdens alone, even in the depths of despair. That earnestness had moved Jin Seongun deeply, and this was payment for that gratitude.
The innkeeper was bewildered, but Jin Seongun's manner was so gravely sincere that he could not refuse.
He nodded, dazed, and was just turning back toward the kitchen when—
A group of people appeared at the inn's entrance. The innkeeper stiffened instinctively, eyes narrowing as he watched them.
Thankfully, they were not dark-sect martial artists.
Confirming they were only ordinary folk, he broke into an easy grin and showed them to their seats.
Even as they were being seated, the men kept talking among themselves without pause.
"Hey, did you hear? Yang Cheon-deok's dead!"
"That's not the half of it. The whole Saryonggang Gang's come apart, they say. Well, that's the dark sects for you. The head falls, and the underlings come crashing down after…"
"Incredible. What in the world happened? If I'd known this was coming, I'd have just kept borrowing from the King of Hell."
"Heaven's punishment, that's what. Weren't their deeds wicked enough to earn it?"
When the debtor vanishes, the debt dies with him. Yang Cheon-deok's death would bring great joy to many.
And then, listening to the middle-aged men chatter, the innkeeper froze solid.
"But whose work was it, anyway?"
"How should I know? That's for the bigwigs in the martial world or the government to figure out. Things'll be uneasy for a while — mind yourselves."
As their conversation rolled on—
The innkeeper's head creaked slowly around.
At the end of his gaze sat two men, faces the very picture of tranquility, inhaling Yanghe Daqu and Hongshaorou.