A Clear Night
Hwa Yeonseol.
A woman who had become the head of one of the Ten Great Merchant Groups of the world at the mere age of twenty-six.
She stood on the top floor of a towering, magnificent hall, taking in the whole of Hwaun Merchant Group with a single sweeping gaze.
She commanded a trading empire vast enough to rank among the ten greatest under heaven, yet her expression was more desolate and hollow than that of any beggar.
Countless people streamed through the grand main gates. The thresholds that merchants had once crossed day in and day out were now trampled by Black Way warriors as if they owned the place. The merchants and scholars who should have been steering Hwaun Merchant Group were too busy reading the faces of those Black Way thugs to do anything else.
Watching the scene with sunken eyes, she bit down hard on her lip. Her crimson lips whitened under the pressure, yet she felt no pain at all.
"How did it come to this?"
Her murmur scattered into the empty air.
The fate of Hwaun Merchant Group had already slipped from her grasp. From the day her father died, the destinies of the merchant group and of her had been as good as sealed.
Hwa Yeonseol found herself recalling the face of a certain man.
He was a man impossible to forget—those deep, black eyes burned too fiercely against that pale skin.
He was also the wretch who had betrayed the kindness shown to him, murdered his father, and fled.
Hwa Yugyeom.
Not a single day had passed without her thinking that name.
Just then, a sound came from outside the door.
"Guild Leader, may I come in?"
"Please do."
At her word the door opened, and an old man who looked well past sixty bowed his head to her with impeccable courtesy.
Hoyeon Baek, Chief Manager of Hwaun Merchant Group.
In a company drowning in filth, he was the only person she could still trust.
"How did it go?"
At her question, the old man's face clouded with embarrassment, and she let out a deep sigh.
The two sat facing each other across the table. After a brief hesitation, Hoyeon Baek spoke in a grim voice.
"The Mount Hua Sect and the Kunlun Sect have refused as well. Mount Hua says it will try to persuade the Martial Alliance Leader, while Kunlun seemed burdened by the sheer distance involved."
Hwa Yeonseol's eyes went hollow.
The promise to persuade the Alliance Leader was nothing but empty talk. The Martial Alliance had already made its position plain—it would not be helping Hwaun Merchant Group.
Kunlun's refusal was much the same. It was true their main temple stood in Qinghai, but no one knew better than she that they maintained branch temples all across the Central Plains.
Rejection had long since become familiar.
At first it had been the sects of Sichuan—the Mount Emei Sect, the Qingcheng Sect, even the Tang Family of Sichuan. Then the Martial Alliance and the Wudang Sect and the Zhuge Clan of Hubei. The Zhongnan Sect of Shaanxi, the Namgung Clan of Anhui. She had begged help from sect after sect and clan after clan, promising fortunes in return, and every last one had turned her away.
The Thousand Poisons Alliance was the problem.
As the hegemon of Sichuan's Black Way, they were stronger and more savage than the criminal syndicates of any other province. The simple fact that they had built their power in Sichuan—home ground of the Tang Family itself—explained everything.
The White Way factions had no reason to clash with the Thousand Poisons Alliance if they could avoid it. For decades, Hwaun Merchant Group itself had kept company with the Black Way far more than the White.
And they could hardly ask the Black Way for help instead. Syndicates that even the White Way steered clear of—the Black Way groups feared the Alliance all the more for it.
"...If only Father were still alive."
"It would have been different. He was a man who knew how to rule the Black Way."
"..."
Defeat deepened in Hwa Yeonseol's eyes.
The Chief Manager's words rang in her ears like a rebuke. Isn't it because you are lacking that the Black Way dares to crawl all over us?
It was not wrong. She lacked the power to handle the Black Way. And it was not simply a matter of mercantile skill—in that respect, she was every bit her father's equal, if not better.
It was the nature of the Black Way itself. To bite and tear at anyone who looked weaker than them—that was what the Black Way was.
"The fault is not yours, Guild Leader. Nor was it the previous Guild Leader's, naturally. There is no sense assigning blame for what is past—but if you insist on looking for a culprit, it was that man's doing, all of it."
"Hwa Yugyeom."
"He won't be using that name anymore. He'll be living a new life, under a new name, by now."
At the Chief Manager's words, a low fury flickered through Hwa Yeonseol's eyes. To think the man who had ruined Hwaun Merchant Group entire was out there living a fresh life—heat surged up from somewhere deep inside her.
At first, she had searched for a reason. Why on earth would he kill his father and run? A father who had taken in an orphaned boy, raised him, taught him.
The answer came quickly. The Chief Manager had discovered that the man carried the Heavenly Killing Star.
He had simply killed. That was all.
Those born under the Heavenly Killing Star, it was said, could not resist the urge to take a life.
"And Salmak?"
"No answer yet."
"Are they still telling us to wait?"
"They've stopped saying even that."
For years she had commissioned them without pause. Salmak, the organization said to have never failed to kill anyone under heaven—yet curiously, they could not even manage to locate him.
A brief silence settled between them.
Chief Manager Hoyeon Baek drew a pouch of Forget-Sorrow Herb from his robe and lit a pipe. He was one of the few men permitted to smoke it in the Guild Leader's presence.
White smoke drifted lazily across the table.
"Miss."
Hwa Yeonseol looked up at him in surprise. Not once since she had become Guild Leader had he called her that.
Hoyeon Baek went on.
"There is no turning this back now."
"..."
"Through the Black Way of Deokyang, Hwaun Merchant Group will pass wholly into the hands of the Thousand Poisons Alliance. And in the process, you and I will die. We are obstacles, after all."
Fear took root in Hwa Yeonseol's eyes.
The Chief Manager exhaled a long plume of smoke before continuing.
"I have stood at the previous Guild Leader's side since the day he founded Hwaun Merchant Group. He was my friend, my comrade—and nothing less than family."
"..."
"And so a thought came to me. If Hwaun Merchant Group is to be taken from us regardless—then at the very least, should we not settle the grievance of the previous Guild Leader?"
With that, the Chief Manager drew a single document from his robe and laid it on the table.
At the sight of it, Hwa Yeonseol's eyes went wide.
"Forgive me, Miss. This is the limit of what I can do."
The document was long and densely worded, but to her eyes—eyes that had lived a lifetime in the world of commerce—the essentials leapt out at once.
First: the Thousand Poisons Alliance would hunt down and kill, by any means necessary, the man who had murdered the previous Guild Leader Hwa Yuntak and fled.
Second: one courier-grade business would be severed from Hwaun Merchant Group and operated solely under Hwa Yeonseol's name.
Third: once both conditions were fulfilled, Hwaun Merchant Group would become the property of the Thousand Poisons Alliance.
"What in the world—"
"It cannot be avoided. And if it cannot be avoided, then we must at least secure our share. We are merchants, are we not?"
"..."
"This old man can die without regret now. But you must live, Miss. The grudge of the previous Guild Leader must be repaid!"
For once in his life, Hoyeon Baek raised his voice before Hwa Yeonseol. In that voice lived his worry for her, and his fury over the death of Hwa Yuntak.
Hwa Yeonseol could not speak for a long moment. Hoyeon Baek—counted among the most capable chief managers under heaven—had made this decision. Even in his eyes, there had been no way out of this situation at all.
And even in the midst of it, he was doing everything he could to save her, to protect her.
"...Just one more day. Let me think on it one more day."
"The Black Way of Deokyang will move to finish things in earnest soon. You must decide by tomorrow morning at the latest. I will personally carry the document bearing the Guild Leader's seal to the Thousand Poisons Alliance."
It was a matter of staking his life.
Yet Hoyeon Baek's eyes brimmed with vigor.
To Hwa Yeonseol, it felt like the last flare of a dying lamp, and it left her heart uneasy.
"...Very well."
When Hwa Yeonseol finally answered, Hoyeon Baek responded with a gentle smile.
"Then I will take my leave. Send for me once you have decided."
The old man rose from his seat and left the office.
Hwa Yeonseol simply stared for a long while at the Forget-Sorrow Herb he had left behind on the table.
"You said we're out of time."
At Jin Seongun's words, Seo Yugyeom nodded.
Before his death, Guild Leader Sa Ryonggang had said it plainly. Hwaun Merchant Group would meet its end within a fortnight.
It was a dark night. Walking down a deserted street with an unhurried stride, Jin Seongun tipped his head back to study the sky for a moment before asking.
"Have you still not decided?"
"Why not just let the place rot? What's it got to do with me? You saw the ledgers. Hwaun Merchant Group was garbage. All I did was kill the man who deserved killing. That daughter and that company are just paying down the karma of their old master."
"You speak true. But I'm not asking about right and wrong right now, or about duty. I'm asking about your heart, young hero. If Hwaun Merchant Group falls, and this generation's Guild Leader dies with it—what do you suppose your heart will feel?"
Seo Yugyeom could not answer easily.
He would feel no great guilt. But he had come to understand that the murderous intent endlessly welling up from somewhere deep inside him was tangled with his past—the past connected to Hwaun Merchant Group.
When the deed could no longer be undone—when Hwaun Merchant Group and that woman had already vanished from the world—he could not begin to guess what his heart would do.
Watching the play of expressions across Seo Yugyeom's face, Jin Seongun changed his question.
"What is this generation's Guild Leader to you?"
"She's my sister."
"Then let's go."
Seo Yugyeom blinked at him, wide-eyed. Paying him no mind, Jin Seongun went on in a tone that suggested he couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
"Someone I know well once said this to me. Fostering an environment in which one's employees can devote themselves to their work is also a merchant's duty. And now it falls to me to fulfill that duty."
"Am I just an employee to you?"
"You're not the head chef."
With that, Jin Seongun flicked his sleeve and shot away, leaving Seo Yugyeom standing alone in the street. He scratched his head.
"Where the hell does he keep learning to talk like that? And from who?"
From the Martial Gods of the Martial God Realm, of course.
Having no way of knowing that, Seo Yugyeom clicked his tongue, then quickly followed in Jin Seongun's wake.
A quiet, hallowed night.
The two men stood in lone silhouette atop a high perimeter wall. The only thing out of the ordinary was that, from head to toe, they were draped head to heel in black.
"So what's the plan?"
Seo Yugyeom asked. He had simply been going along with whatever Jin Seongun wanted, but by this point curiosity was getting the better of him.
"Well, first we need to buy time, don't we?"
"I get that, but—"
Jin Seongun let out a soft chuckle. Seo Yugyeom shot him a look as if he'd just witnessed something deeply strange.
Oblivious, Jin Seongun was recalling the Merchant King's advice. The Black Way scum don't even trust their own—so dig into that.
And so they had come to this.
At this hour, in these clothes, wearing exactly this kind of smile...
"From tonight, we are assassins."
"Again? I crawled out of that world, remember."
"...Not Salmak assassins. Assassins of Blue Night Valley."
A sharp gleam flashed through Seo Yugyeom's eyes.
The meaning of Jin Seongun's words was clear.
Blue Night Valley was one of the Four Great Black Way Factions of Deokyang. And the place where they now stood was home to another of the four—Mukyang Gate.
During his conversation with Guild Leader Sa Ryonggang, Jin Seongun had once offered his assessment of Deokyang's Black Way factions.
His verdict on Mukyang Gate, in particular, had run unusually long.
The broke monks of Mukyang—ignorant, simple-minded, backward, allergic to thinking, and yet endlessly full of grievances.
At the time, the contempt had been so withering that Seo Yugyeom had assumed it was exaggeration. But now, perched atop their wall like this, he found himself thinking it might have been a criticism grounded entirely in objective fact.
"...Look at that. They planted the banner pole upside down."
"Perfect."
Jin Seongun let out another soft chuckle.
Seo Yugyeom shot him a revolted look—and utterly ignored, Jin Seongun quietly drew a jet-black wooden sword, the kind an assassin might favor, and spoke.
"A clear night, indeed."