Have You Been Well?
Seemingly unfazed, Jang Hong held his breath and watched the situation unfold.
For the moment, the warriors of the Twilight Pavilion looked frightened. But there were far more underworld thugs scattered throughout all of Deokyang.
"Their friends will come swarming any moment now," Jang Hong pressed, anxious at how utterly relaxed the two men seemed.
Jin Seongun gave a half-hearted nod, his gaze drifting briefly toward one spot.
Assassins.
Two presences had settled into the shadows of the alley. Assassins of Blue Night Valley, drawn by the shouts of the Twilight Pavilion warriors moments before.
Jin Seongun glanced at Seo Yugyeom. Without a single word exchanged between them, meaning passed between their eyes alone.
In an instant, each man's role was decided.
Jin Seongun launched himself lightly at the Twilight Pavilion warriors. He needed no blade. Riding his speed, he simply drove a fist forward.
The warrior in front, startled, swung his sword in a panicked arc.
Crunch—!
The fist shattered the sword outright. And it didn't stop there—it buried itself deep into the man's stomach.
"Kuhak!"
The man vomited a foul gout of blood.
The remaining two swung their blades at the same time.
Jin Seongun regarded them with calm, unblinking eyes, then picked up the broken blade from the ground. He lightly deflected the saber rushing in from his left, knocked aside the sword surging in from his right with his bare hand, and bored in deep.
Thud!
The broken blade buried itself in a man's chest.
In the same motion, Jin Seongun seized the man's arm and flung it out to the left. The sword in that man's grip flashed across his comrade's neck and severed it in a single stroke.
Before two full breaths had passed, all three men lay dead. The whole sequence flowed as naturally as a single motion.
Jang Hong's jaw hung open. He hadn't managed to follow every movement, but even he could tell that something extraordinary had just happened.
Then it came.
Two shadows dropped silently to either side of Seo Yugyeom. A pair of pitch-black throwing daggers hurtled toward his neck and his heart.
There was no sound, no presence in the motion whatsoever—the swift, silent movement of true assassins.
But just before the daggers touched Seo Yugyeom's body, they lost their force and clattered uselessly to the ground. The two assassins crumpled, holes punched clean through their throats.
The Heavenly Killing Short Saber was already in Seo Yugyeom's hand.
He flicked the blood from the blade and clicked his tongue.
"Never come in with the wind at your back."
Assassins of Salmak are trained to always account for the direction of the wind before a kill. A master with keen enough senses can detect even the slightest disturbance in the air.
Of course, that was a realm entirely beyond the assassins of Blue Night Valley.
Jang Hong blinked rapidly.
It had truly been the space of a blink. Five warriors lay dying in the alley.
To Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom, it had looked as effortless as breathing.
Having watched it all, Jang Hong reached a realization.
So this is the ship I'm boarding.
He was already marked by the underworld thugs of Deokyang. Whatever he knew about these two men, he was a dead man whether he talked or not.
Jang Hong had sharp instincts and quick wits—it was precisely how a mere pickpocket had survived this long despite his negligible martial arts. And to his eye, Jin Seongun seemed to hold the greater authority between the two men.
So he folded into a polite fist-and-palm salute toward Jin Seongun.
"Pickpocket—no, gentleman of the gentry Jang Hong, humbly offers his life in service to the great hero's grace—"
Before he could even finish speaking.
Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom walked out of the alley.
"W-wait for me!"
Jang Hong scrambled after them in a panic. Every instinct he possessed was screaming that if he got off this ship, he wouldn't survive.
The three of them made their way, quite naturally, to Deokyang Inn. There was no grand reason behind it—it was simply the most comfortable place in Deokyang.
The innkeeper greeted Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom warmly. Ever since the Salyong River incident, he had privately regarded the two as his saviors.
Then his eyes landed on Jang Hong, and his pleasant expression soured.
"Ah. So you've crawled in here too."
Jang Hong, it seemed, was already famous in these parts.
Jin Seongun watched the exchange for a moment before speaking up.
"Would you perhaps consider taking a trip with your family? A little travel?"
"Travel?"
The innkeeper looked baffled, and Jin Seongun went on.
"Yes. You've been working without rest all this time, after all..."
Jin Seongun deliberated briefly. All things considered, honesty seemed the better course.
"I think something is about to happen in Deokyang. That pickpocket over there was being chased by the underworld crowd as well—probably because of us."
The innkeeper's face turned grave. He was no martial artist, but he had run an inn for decades. Naturally, he understood the ways of the Jianghu all too well.
And he was worried—not for himself, but for Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom.
"Will you two be all right?"
"Hard to say. But if they go after the people around us instead of us directly, things will get a lot more troublesome."
Just as they had tried to kill Jang Hong.
If the pursuit escalated, the chances of them turning their eyes on Deokyang Inn itself were considerable. The innkeeper understood immediately.
"...It'll get smashed to pieces, won't it?"
Inns get smashed to pieces all the time. And in a place like Deokyang, crawling with underworld martial artists, they got smashed all the more often.
Jin Seongun, an innkeeper himself, understood the sentiment. But he couldn't bring himself to lie.
"I'll do my best to be careful. And if it does get smashed, I'll compensate you, of course."
"Haha... don't trouble yourself over compensation. I have a conscience too. I doubt there'll be any place for me in it anyway—I'll just read the room and clear out, yes?"
Jin Seongun gave a wry smile and nodded.
At that, the innkeeper made a show of laughing even more heartily, clapping both young men on the shoulders.
After all, these were the two young men who had delivered him from that hellish King Yama's mine. Even if his inn burned to the ground, he only hoped they would come out of it safe.
A broken inn could simply be rebuilt. Lives, once lost, could never be reclaimed.
And with that, the innkeeper gathered a few belongings and left the inn.
Jang Hong peered into the kitchen for a moment, then said,
"Should I go rustle up some food?"
"Now you're stealing other people's jobs too?"
With that remark, Seo Yugyeom walked into the kitchen. He checked over a few of the implements and soon began cooking with practiced ease.
Watching him work, Jang Hong edged over to Jin Seongun and asked carefully,
"What... did that gentleman used to do?"
"He's the head cook of my inn."
"...Head cook? Your inn?"
"Ah, right. I'm an innkeeper myself."
"..."
Jang Hong blinked rapidly for a long moment. Jin Seongun's expression was so utterly flat that there was simply no telling whether it was a joke or the truth.
The office of the Head of the Hwaun Merchant Group.
The room was thick with hazy smoke.
Hwa Yeonseol was staring out the window. She had only recently taken up smoking Forget-Sorrow Herb.
The first time she'd smoked it, her throat had burned so fiercely she'd wondered why anyone bothered with the stuff—yet since then, she found herself reaching for it more and more often. Especially on days like today, when the sky hung gray and her heart felt heavy.
Is this the end?
The Vice Alliance Leader of the Thousand Poisons Alliance himself had come in person. From that moment on, all hope had drained away.
Hwaun Merchant Group was finished.
She had agonized through the night, but with the Vice Alliance Leader planted firmly in her offices, there was no countermeasure to be found.
And there was no one to help. Hwaun Merchant Group had always kept the orthodox sects at arm's length and courted the underworld instead.
The orthodox sects had no reason to rescue a merchant group they weren't close to, not at the cost of colliding with the Thousand Poisons Alliance—and the underworld was terrified of the Alliance.
Hwa Yeonseol closed her eyes tightly. Never had she imagined that Hwaun Merchant Group would vanish during her own tenure.
"Lady Merchant Leader."
Ho Yeonbaek's voice came from outside.
He was the only person who still stayed by her side. Though lately, the way he fawned and scraped before the Vice Alliance Leader had grown grating to watch.
She knew he was forcing himself through it for her sake and for the Merchant Group's. And yet it still stung.
Hwa Yeonseol pulled on her outer robe and stepped outside at once. Chief Manager Ho Yeonbaek started at the sight of her.
"You're going out?"
"Yes. I need some air."
"The Vice Alliance Leader will object."
Hwa Yeonseol looked at her chief manager. Since when, exactly, had the head of Hwaun Merchant Group been forbidden to so much as leave her own offices?
She was going out today no matter what. She might well be dead soon—and she wanted to walk the streets of Deokyang, the city where she'd been born and raised, and take it in with her own eyes one last time.
"Tell them to guard the premises."
Ho Yeonbaek's eyes wavered slightly.
She walked down the corridor, leaving him behind. He hesitated a moment, then hurried after her.
"I'm coming with you."
"Why?"
Ho Yeonbaek scanned their surroundings, then lowered his voice.
"Because it will be dangerous."
No further explanation was needed.
Hwa Yeonseol was hardly so naive as to miss his meaning. From the Thousand Poisons Alliance's standpoint, quietly eliminating her would certainly be among their options.
She let out a small sigh. Still, this was the chief manager who had cared for her since she was a baby, so she could understand his worry.
And so the two of them walked the streets of Deokyang.
Out among the world for the first time in ages, Hwa Yeonseol felt her spirits lift almost in spite of herself. The air seemed clearer, the faces of the people brimming with life. As she wandered the bustling marketplace, memories of her childhood surfaced.
She used to walk these streets holding her father's hand, a candied fruit skewer always dangling from the other.
Now, both her father and the candied fruit were gone.
Hwa Yeonseol felt her heart grow tangled and heavy for no good reason.
"Shall we buy some candied fruit?"
"...As you wish, my lady."
Ho Yeonbaek, for his part, was entirely occupied with watching for threats around them.
Soon Hwa Yeonseol turned her steps toward the candied fruit stalls. It was the shop she used to visit so often as a child—though whether it still stood there after all these years, she couldn't say.
After a long walk, she found herself on a familiar street. Many of the shops were exactly as she remembered them, and hope stirred that the candied fruit shop might be too.
Hwa Yeonseol narrowed her eyes and peered far down the street, through the crowds of people.
"There it is!"
It was astonishing. Even back then, the shop had been run by an old woman—and the old woman was still selling candied fruit there, exactly as she appeared in Hwa Yeonseol's memories.
Hwa Yeonseol quickened her pace.
"Grandmother!"
The old woman recognized her and broke into a bright smile. A dozen years had passed, but Hwa Yeonseol was not a face one forgot easily.
Hwa Yeonseol was soon picking out her candied fruit when, quite suddenly, she felt a gaze upon her and turned her head.
"..."
"..."
The eyes of one man met hers.
The candied fruit in her hand dropped to the ground with a soft thud.
Countless people streamed up and down the street. Yet the two of them saw only each other, as though they occupied a different space entirely.
Time seemed to stop.
A torrent of emotions flashed across Hwa Yeonseol's face. And after wrestling through all of them, all of those thoughts, she spat out a single word.
"Why...?"
The wretch who had murdered her father and fled. The very architect of Hwaun Merchant Group's ruin.
The man she had hunted for over a decade, desperate to kill, a man who had never once shown himself—and there he stood, cool as you please, stuffing his face with candied fruit in Deokyang of all places.
Why?
Her mind simply refused to comprehend what she was seeing.
Seo Yugyeom's reaction was not so very different.
He just blinked. Traces of the girl she'd been still lingered in Hwa Yeonseol's face, in places.
He was a man who never lost his composure, yet this sudden encounter with her had rattled even him.
I'm not ready for this.
After a moment of searching for the right words, all Seo Yugyeom managed was:
"...You been well?"
In that instant, Hwa Yeonseol's face crumpled violently. It went beyond mere displeasure—she looked like a woman whose very existence had been mocked.
Seo Yugyeom felt a sudden, powerful urge to slap his own mouth.
In the distance, Jin Seongun was approaching. Seo Yugyeom found himself praying that Jin Seongun would rescue him from this situation.
"..."
But the moment Jin Seongun spotted them, he promptly turned on his heel and began walking in the opposite direction.
Jin Seongun's perceptiveness had always been a selectively good one.