A Price That Will Never Come Again
On a night when rain poured down as if the heavens themselves had sprung a leak, no one wanted to set foot outside.
For that very reason, the expressions of the Blue Night Valley Master and the Twilight Pavilion Master were far from pleasant.
The head of Hwaun Merchant Group had fled. It was hardly a catastrophe. How far could a woman who knew no martial arts possibly run?
Even if she were hiding somewhere in Deokyang, there was not a single corner the eyes of Twilight Pavilion and Blue Night Valley could not reach.
Her whereabouts were soon discovered, and Saryeonggeuk had personally ordered the two of them to lead their men and capture her.
"Of all things to do, running away? Tsk."
The Twilight Pavilion Master clicked his tongue. She had to pick a night like this to bolt and create a nuisance. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that killing Hwaun's leader was the right call.
But that fool of a Vice Alliance Leader had insisted she be brought back alive.
A damned old relic.
Despite such sentiments, the Twilight Pavilion Master spoke with due courtesy.
"It seems the Vice Alliance Leader has his eye on the Merchant Leader, doesn't it?"
The Blue Night Valley Master nodded. Hwaun's leader was unquestionably a great beauty. And old men of the Black Dao like Saryeonggeuk, for all their years, never acted their age — they were always hunting for young women.
To the Blue Night Valley Master, who had carved such emotions out of himself as a child to become an assassin, it was a truly pathetic sight.
The two men traded disparaging remarks about the Vice Alliance Leader as they ambled along at an easy pace. They had already dispatched their subordinates to Deokyang Inn, so there was no need to rush.
A thick sheet of rain beat down unpleasantly on their pressed-together bamboo hats.
"Ha. Perfect weather for dying, this."
The Blue Night Valley Master said so while exhaling a plume of Forget-Sorrow Herb smoke. The Twilight Pavilion Master shot him a look that plainly asked, what is wrong with this idiot now?
After a long stretch of silent walking, the Blue Night Valley Master spoke up out of nowhere.
"I never imagined Master Sa of the Dragon-Gang Hall and Master Mok of the Moyang Sect would die like that. What will you do from here on?"
"What is there to do?"
The Twilight Pavilion Master stared at him. The rain was so torrential that it was hard to read his expression even at arm's length.
The Blue Night Valley Master continued.
"You got lucky, didn't you? The four shares of territory we were meant to split four ways have become ours alone. Unlike those two dead fools, Twilight Pavilion Master, you're the genuine article of the Black Dao, no?"
The Twilight Pavilion Master's expression turned strange.
That bastard Blue Night Valley Master... he's gotten sentimental about something.
For a moment he wondered whether an assassin was even allowed to be like that, but he saw no reason to pick a fight over it.
"Oh, same as always. Beat up on merchants, beat up on the weak, beat up on anyone who comes at us... keep at it long enough and someday we'll be as big as the Thousand Poisons Alliance or the South Black League, I suppose."
"How romantic."
"......"
The Twilight Pavilion Master walked on, thinking things like, I want to stop having conversations with this guy.
Contrary to his wishes, the Blue Night Valley Master pressed on in a voice that sounded drunk on something.
"I'm going after Salmak."
"You're insane."
"Hahaha, I knew you'd say that. But a man ought to dream big. Do you think Salmak's assassins are some special breed? Assassins are assassins, everywhere you go. Salmak simply has more money, that's all."
The Blue Night Valley Master genuinely believed it.
Raising a single assassin cost an astronomical sum to begin with. The more money poured in, the greater the quantity and quality of killers one could produce.
Salmak was the finest assassination organization under heaven because it was rich. With sufficient capital behind him, he was certain he could build a guild to rival Salmak — perhaps even surpass it.
That was why the Blue Night Valley Master believed he now stood at the greatest turning point of his life.
Thirty percent of Hwaun Merchant Group's shares. He would have to pay a hefty tribute up to the Thousand Poisons Alliance out of that, and yet the money left over would still be staggering.
"I met Shinsalgwi once. A terrifying man. But hardly someone who stands all that high."
Shinsalgwi was the Vice Master of Salmak.
He was also called the second-greatest assassin of the Central Plains.
"Could you not just walk quietly?"
"......"
The Blue Night Valley Master's face soured briefly. The problem with the young ones these days was that they had no romance in them.
Since he had no confidence in beating the Twilight Pavilion Master in a fight right here and now, however, he decided to walk in silence.
And so the two men took up a position on a hill overlooking Deokyang Inn.
Their underlings had already surrounded the inn in a tight cordon. It was simple enough: kill everyone inside, extract Hwa Yeonseol, and be done with it.
He wondered whether the leaders themselves had truly needed to come, but when a man like Saryeonggeuk gave an order, one had little choice but to obey.
It was then.
The lit door of the inn swung open, and someone stepped out.
The Twilight Pavilion Master narrowed his eyes and concentrated his inner sight. The weather made it impossible to see the man's face properly.
"Young one, by the look of him..."
"He's holding a sword."
The Twilight Pavilion Master gave the Blue Night Valley Master a freshly astonished look. The Blue Night Valley Master only chuckled.
"Assassins are creatures of the dark."
"...I suppose."
The Twilight Pavilion Master resolved that the Blue Night Valley Master should keep his mouth shut from here on out.
By the time both men's gazes had returned to the inn —
The man swung his sword. There was nothing overtly threatening about it. It was slow, ordinary, light.
But at the scene that followed, both their faces went grave.
Shaaaaaaang—!
The crimson sword qi that poured from the blade swelled laterally as it grew. A massive scarlet blaze surged forward, swallowing the rain and the armed men all at once.
The screams of their underlings were briefly audible before the rain devoured them. The distance was far, and the downpour heavy.
And yet, cutting through even that roar of rain, a ferocious crack of displaced air rang sharp and clear in their ears.
BOOOOOM—!
The monstrous thunder raised by the crimson sword qi came rolling in as if to swallow heaven and earth whole.
If it was this deafening from such a distance, standing before it would have torn their ears clean off.
A short moment passed.
The surroundings, which had flashed bright as day, sank back into darkness. The rain was washing everything away.
The two men stared at each other for a beat.
"That... that monster..."
There was a monster in Deokyang Inn.
The Twilight Pavilion Master gazed at the monster with a face gone utterly serious.
For an instant, his knees nearly buckled. The man was looking directly at them. Even through the sheets of rain, without being able to see his face clearly, the presence was unmistakable.
"R-Retreat...!"
The Twilight Pavilion Master said so and glanced to his side.
The mad assassin bastard was already gone.
The Blue Night Valley Master was retracing the way they had come in the blink of an eye.
The Twilight Pavilion Master marveled inwardly.
So this is an assassin's judgment!
A man who cradled the grandest dream of anyone alive, yet ran from danger faster than anyone.
Cursing the Blue Night Valley Master in his heart, the Twilight Pavilion Master broke into a sprint himself.
His one blessing was the distance — considerable enough that the monster could not possibly give chase.
Then that eerie crack of air sounded behind him once more, and every hair on his body stood on end.
He was a man who had rolled through the Black Dao his entire life. On pure instinct honed by that world, he spun his body around.
Shlak—!
A red, razor-sharp line of sword qi sheared off the Twilight Pavilion Master's left arm. The blood that gushed out pooled on the ground, unable to seep in, spreading every which way.
"GYAAAAAAGH!"
Even as he shrieked, the Twilight Pavilion Master frantically stanched the wound. His legs did not stop. If he paused for even a moment, he was certain the monster would come after him.
The laughable part was that the one he resented most was neither Saryeonggeuk, who had sent him here, nor that monster — but the Blue Night Valley Master, who had bolted off all on his lonesome with such alacrity.
Writhing in agony, the Twilight Pavilion Master ran with every ounce of dying strength he possessed. He had no leisure to look back. His balance was wrecked by the missing arm, but he forced himself to run, and run again.
.
.
.
By the time the Twilight Pavilion Master stumbled back into the Hwaun Merchant Group's halls.
The Blue Night Valley Master was already kneeling before Saryeonggeuk, head bowed to the floor.
Saryeonggeuk took in the Twilight Pavilion Master's state and clicked his tongue.
"Where did you leave your arm?"
"...There is a monster at Deokyang Inn."
"What an imbecile."
Deep humiliation washed over the Twilight Pavilion Master.
But there was nothing else to be done.
Careful not to let his furious expression show, he kept his head lowered and knelt before Saryeonggeuk.
"I beg your forgiveness, Vice Alliance Leader."
Saryeonggeuk looked down on the two of them with a face of pure contempt.
He felt no alarm whatsoever. He had spent the last several decades living as the second man of the Sichuan Black Dao, after all.
In his eyes, the Twilight Pavilion Master and the Blue Night Valley Master were vermin all the same; there was no reason to grow wary simply because such insects had come back broken.
"What manner of man is he?"
"Young. He wielded a sword, and..."
The two of them stammered through an account of what they had witnessed.
No lengthy explanation was needed. The man had swung his sword once, and that had been the end of it.
Saryeonggeuk nodded slowly.
"A truly formidable man, then."
Relief spread across the faces of the Twilight Pavilion Master and the Blue Night Valley Master. They had feared Saryeonggeuk might reprimand them, or worse, punish them.
Yet Saryeonggeuk's expression, unlike his words, remained utterly calm. If anything, he seemed almost pleased by how things had turned out.
Not that the two men, heads bowed to the ground, could see it.
"Nothing to be done, then. A master that strong is a variable to be handled with care. I must send word to the Thousand Poisons Alliance."
At that, the Twilight Pavilion Master looked up at him.
Those words meant, in other words, that the elite of the Thousand Poisons Alliance would be summoned here to Deokyang in droves.
The Twilight Pavilion Master spat curses in his heart.
If the Thousand Poisons Alliance descended upon the city en masse, there was a very real chance Deokyang's reins of power would be wrested from them entirely. Those men did not settle a matter and simply go home.
Worse still, he had lost an arm. Even granting it was his off-hand, adapting to the balance of a one-armed body would take a very long time.
Looking at Saryeonggeuk's placid face, the Twilight Pavilion Master understood at last. Their failure had handed the man his justification.
He had wanted to draw the Thousand Poisons Alliance into this board in earnest from the very beginning. That much was obvious now.
Damn it all...
The Twilight Pavilion Master's gut told him the situation was spiraling out of control. He turned his head to glance at the Blue Night Valley Master, whose expression, if anything, looked relieved.
Stronger hands were coming to help — apparently the fool simply thought that was wonderful news.
This one, that one — not a shred of use from either of them.
But justification aside, the fact remained that he had returned having been utterly crushed, and so the Twilight Pavilion Master had nothing to say to Saryeonggeuk.
All he could do was choke down the humiliation and dread churning inside him and bow his head lower still.
Jin Seongun had deliberately let the fleeing Twilight Pavilion Master and Blue Night Valley Master go.
There was no reason to chase them. For one thing, guests were inside the inn, and more fundamentally, they simply weren't worth the pursuit.
He had even held a faint hope, if anything.
Sent back like that, won't they scurry off and fetch a bigger backer on their own?
Only after the two fugitives had vanished completely from sight did Jin Seongun glance briefly around the surroundings and step back inside the inn.
Hwa Yeonseol wore the expression of someone lost in a dream.
It was an understandable reaction. She had heard tales of the great masters of the murim often enough, but had always taken them as somewhat embellished legend.
Crossing rivers and gorges in a single stride, spewing house-sized blades of qi from a sword — such descriptions had simply been too unreal to believe.
And yet that very description — no, a sight that put mere description to shame — had just unfolded before her eyes.
The man who had produced it, for his part, was shaking the rainwater from his clothes as if it were nothing at all.
"What in the world..."
As she blinked at him in a daze, Seo Yugyeom simply raised a thumb toward Jin Seongun.
He had already seen something far more intense and colossal than the sword qi he had just witnessed, back when they were caught in the formation of the Dragon-Gang Hall. If anything, this time it looked as though Jin Seongun had throttled his power back out of consideration for the surroundings.
Seo Yugyeom gave Hwa Yeonseol's shoulder a couple of light taps and lowered his voice.
"Who knows — maybe the tyrant of Hubei will turn out to be an inn."
He said it like a joke, but he was half serious.
Certainly, Hubei had no shortage of powers at present. The Wudang Sect, the Zhuge Clan, the Wulin Alliance and the South Black League, among others...
But in ten years, in twenty — of all the martial artists of their generation, who would be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jin Seongun?
Seok Taeshin of Seok Manor and Seomun Ak of the Seomun Clan went without saying.
The same went for Baek Sang and Baek Seol of the Wudang Sect.
Even Tang Soyeon of the Tang Clan was, next to Jin Seongun, nothing more than a child.
No — there was no dragon or phoenix under heaven, however storied, who could measure up.
In that spirit, Seo Yugyeom had long since summed up his own decision to stay at Seongun Inn in a single word.
And it was a word that suited Hwa Yeonseol, a merchant to the bone, even better than it suited him.
"It's the chance of a lifetime to buy in at the bottom."