Phantom Among Men (1)
Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom returned to Deokyang Inn.
Hwa Yeonseol had urged them to stay at the Merchant Group's compound, but by now the two men found the inn far more comfortable.
Having already drunk a fair amount at the merchant house, they returned to the inn, threw together a few simple side dishes, and kept drinking. It was a rare vacation, after all—a pleasure trip. They savored every moment of it.
They had saved one of the Ten Great Merchant Groups of the realm and killed the Vice Alliance Leader of the Thousand Poisons Alliance, yet at its heart this journey through Jianghu had been nothing more than an outing for the two of them.
Their faces faintly flushed, the pair climbed up to this floor. Like any inn worth its name, Deokyang Inn kept guest rooms, and since they had taken the entire establishment for themselves, the rooms sat empty and waiting. Each claimed one of his own.
From the corridor, Seo Yugyeom opened his door and spoke.
"Let's head back in three days."
"Why three?"
Not one day, not two, nor four—an oddly arbitrary stretch of time. Seo Yugyeom snorted a small laugh.
"There's someone I want to see one last time."
"I see."
Jin Seongun nodded, entirely unbothered, and disappeared into his room. That careless attitude of his was something Seo Yugyeom appreciated—it put a person's heart at ease without any reason for it.
Changed into fresh clothes, Jin Seongun looked around his room, and what he felt anew was this: old as Deokyang Inn was, it deserved to be called the finest inn in Deokyang. The room was neither large nor ornate, but the aged wallpaper, the worn floor, and the timeworn furniture had all been so lovingly maintained that they carried a dignified, antique grace.
Countless guests must have passed through this room. Martial artists and traveling merchants, sightseers and scholars, fugitives and their pursuers, courtesans, escort masters and cart-pullers... Every room held the residue of innumerable lives, layered over with the innkeeper's care and tireless effort. A space that always held people.
"An inn is such a thing, isn't it."
Jin Seongun nodded to himself. By that measure, Seongun Inn was still only half-formed. When he returned to Yichang, he would have to think about adding proper guest rooms.
Hoyeon Baek, former Chief Manager of the Hwaun Merchant Group.
When Saryeonggeuk had marched on Seongun Inn with Deokyang's criminal underworld in tow, the man had remained behind at the merchant house to wait. He had trained in martial arts, true, but fighting was the business of real Jianghu men—or so he had told himself.
When Saryeonggeuk's return ran later than expected, anxiety began gnawing at him, and as dawn broke, Hoyeon Baek finally understood.
It's all over.
He was a man who had served for decades as chief manager of a merchant group as vast as Hwaun. His instincts and judgment were razor-sharp. The moment he realized something had gone catastrophically wrong, he gathered the money and fled.
But there was one thing even he had not foreseen: the forces of the Thousand Poisons Alliance and the Tang Family had locked horns at the borders of Deokyang. There was no way for Hoyeon Baek to slip between them. And so he crept back into Deokyang.
A day later, word spread that Saryeonggeuk was dead. The Saryonggangbang, the Mukyangmun, the Blue Night Valley, and even the Twilight Pavilion—all four Great Black Way factions of Deokyang had been annihilated within half a month.
Holed up in some nameless inn, hiding like a rat in a deathbed, Hoyeon Baek was wracked by terrible fear. Not for fear of the Thousand Poisons Alliance, nor of Hwa Yeonseol's vengeance.
Seo Yugyeom.
It was because he expected that murderer born under the Heavenly Killing Star would come for his life without fail. The mere memory of the eyes that had stared at him from the alley made his blood run cold. Even if he fled to the ends of the earth, Seo Yugyeom had to be killed. As long as the man lived, there would be no place in all the Central Plains where Hoyeon Baek could sleep soundly.
And so Hoyeon Baek waited. Once every three days. Until the day the Salmak commissions opened.
The time had come.
Dressed in shabby clothes, a bamboo hat pressed deep over his face, Hoyeon Baek moved only through deserted back alleys, watching and watching again, until he arrived at a small fabric shop in Deokyang. The place was so run-down he wondered how it turned any profit at all. Inside, an old man with a head of white hair dozed, nodding off in his chair.
"Excuse me."
Hoyeon Baek called out in a lowered voice, but the old man showed no sign of waking. He tried several more times. Nothing. Heat rose to Hoyeon Baek's face, and he snapped.
"...I say there!"
The old man jolted awake, eyes flying wide open, and wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth.
Letting out a soft sigh, Hoyeon Baek drew the things he had prepared from his breast and handed them over: Seo Yugyeom's detailed information, and a commission token from the Mangeum Manor's chief manager.
"See to it this time. Without fail."
The old man stared at the money and the documents in silence. When nothing came from him, Hoyeon Baek's brow furrowed.
"Why no answer?"
"Don't ask me. Settle it with him over there."
The old man gestured to a corner of the shop, where a man stood leaning against the wall, arms crossed. The moment Hoyeon Baek saw his face, his legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor.
It was Seo Yugyeom.
"You didn't stray a single step from expectations."
Seo Yugyeom smiled warmly and stepped out of the shadows. Hoyeon Baek wore the expression of a man looking upon a demon. How in the world was this wretch connected to Salmak—?
In an instant, fragments snapped together in Hoyeon Baek's mind, and he arrived at a single conclusion.
"You—! You were in Salmak all along! That's why Salmak you—!"
Terror and betrayal crashed over him at once. Fear of Seo Yugyeom, and a sense of betrayal toward Salmak.
Seo Yugyeom approached with slow, unhurried steps.
"You would have lived if you'd just run off and stayed gone. But you had to pull a stunt like this right to the very end. So now you die."
In his hand hung the Heavenly Killing Dagger. For a fleeting moment, the words please spare me rose in Hoyeon Baek's throat. He could not force them out. The eyes of Seo Yugyeom looking down at him held not the slightest shred of mercy.
Seo Yugyeom crouched before him and asked,
"Any last words?"
"...You unfilial bastard of a son."
"How memorable."
Seo Yugyeom burst out laughing, then drove the Heavenly Killing Dagger into Hoyeon Baek's throat. Blood poured to the floor in a sudden flood, and with a horrid, gurgling sound, Hoyeon Baek collapsed where he knelt.
Wiping the blood from the dagger with a rag from the old man's table, Seo Yugyeom said,
"Kindly handle the cleanup."
"I'll never understand why the Vice Master keeps you alive. Salmak has never once forgiven a traitor."
The old man clicked his tongue. His eyes held a faint, simmering contempt as he regarded Seo Yugyeom.
Seo Yugyeom paid it no mind, offering the old man a pleasant smile.
"Come by for a meal sometime before you die. Then you'll understand."
Before leaving, Seo Yugyeom collected every commission token from Hoyeon Baek's person, handed one to the old man, and walked out of the fabric shop.
And so the business in Deokyang was settled.
The farewell with Hwa Yeonseol had been awkward, but no hostility remained between them, and under the alliance of the Tang Family and Hwaun Merchant Group, Deokyang was set to become a far more livable town. Though the somewhat battered furnishings of Deokyang Inn would be repaired at the merchant group's expense, of course.
Thus Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom left Deokyang with lighter hearts.
They decided to travel by carriage. If they went straight back to Yichang from here, it would be a long while before another pleasure trip came their way, after all.
The driver's skill was superb, and the carriage rolled smoothly down mountain roads as if they were the polished avenues of Chengdu. It had not been so smooth at the start—bandits had blocked the road a couple of times, and Seo Yugyeom and Jin Seongun had held a "conversation" with them. After that, the driver treated the two men with the utmost deference.
Jin Seongun, gazing at the scenery drifting past the window, suddenly remarked.
"There's a sea out there."
Seo Yugyeom turned to the window with a look of pure disbelief. The horizon spread endlessly before them, so vast one could easily mistake it for the open ocean. Naturally, there was no sea lying between Sichuan and Hubei.
"It's a lake. Lake Dongting."
It was counted among the greatest lakes of the Central Plains, alongside Lake Tai, the Ying, and Lake Poyang. Jin Seongun stared blankly at the water stretching to the horizon like an ocean.
The lake was so immense that a great commercial market had grown up around it. Curious what kind of food a place like this might sell, Jin Seongun made a proposal.
"Let's get a meal before we move on."
And so the carriage rolled to a stop before an inn. A traveling carriage was apparently a rare sight, for people kept stealing glances at it. Jin Seongun offered the driver a meal as well.
"Please, join us."
The driver declined twice, but Jin Seongun could hardly sit down to eat while leaving out the man who would carry them a long way together, so he pressed the invitation. Eventually the driver gave in with a helpless smile and followed the two into the inn.
.
.
.
The driver drank no liquor, citing the need to drive the carriage.
The three men ate in easy silence, without much conversation. That was simply how it was when men ate together.
The food sold around Lake Dongting, perhaps surprisingly, was little different from what any ordinary inn served. It was the people gathered in the inn that were different. It felt as though every stripe of humanity under heaven had assembled under one roof—merchants and martial artists, families and sightseers, even a few who looked like government clerks. Jin Seongun thought an inn like this would have its own charm.
And then it happened.
A conversation that caught the interest of both Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom drifted over from a table of merchants.
"They say the Martial Alliance is stepping in this time."
"The bastard will be caught soon enough."
Jin Seongun chewed absentmindedly, his attention snagged by the talk. Someone who had committed a crime and gone on the run, was it? Perhaps another Martial World Public Enemy, like Sikmugaek before him.
The merchants continued.
"Who can say? Even the Namgung Clan came out trumpeting they'd catch him, and they came up empty."
Something unusual flickered in Jin Seongun's eyes. The Namgung Clan was one of the Five Noble Clans of the orthodox path. If even they had failed, the fugitive's skill must be extraordinary.
"Remind me—what did he steal this time?"
"Word is, it was the underwear of the Martial Alliance's Hundred Strategist."
"...Is he a lecher or what?"
"But they say the deputy strategist is a man."
"...A lecher for men, then?"
By the time the story reached that point, the chopsticks of Jin Seongun, Seo Yugyeom, and the driver had all come to a complete halt.
A Hundred Strategist of the Martial Alliance was a fairly high-ranking strategist, capable of directing a full hundred men. Naturally, stealing so much as an item from such a man would require staking one's life infiltrating the Wulin Alliance itself. And after all that, to steal nothing but his underwear? The curiosity was unbearable.
Unable to restrain himself any longer, Seo Yugyeom rose from his seat and approached the merchants.
"Gentlemen, what in the world are you all talking about? I'm so curious I can't swallow a bite."
He said it with a warm, easy smile, but the merchants grew briefly wary—his face was simply too cold and sharp. So Seo Yugyeom broadened his smile into something even friendlier.
"Ah, I work as a cook at an inn, you see. I do love stories like this."
The word cook seemed to loosen the merchants' guard a little. For traveling merchants who roamed from town to town, an inn was a place to be grateful for.
The merchants' explanations followed. It was like a gathering of amateur historians—dramatic and long-winded—but boiled down, it went like this.
There was a thief.
A truly exceptional one.
Orthodox sects, unorthodox sects, the government, merchant houses—hells, even monasteries—he robbed every famous establishment in the land without discrimination. The trouble was that he was so impossibly elusive that no one had ever managed to catch him. Several famous merchant houses had grown so wary of him that they requested escorts from powerful martial forces—and were robbed anyway. When it came to light that those escorts had come from great powers like the Qingcheng Sect, the Yue Clan of Shandong, and the Namgung Clan, the rumor sprouted wings and spread across the whole country in the blink of an eye.
"And there's more to the story."
Seo Yugyeom was such an eager audience that the merchants, caught up in their own momentum, suddenly dropped their voices and lowered the mood.
"The Shadowless Divine Thief."
At those words, Jin Seongun sprayed out the liquor he had been drinking.
The merchants and Seo Yugyeom stared at him strangely for a moment before carrying on.
"They say someone has appeared claiming the succession of the Shadowless Divine Thief, the greatest thief of all antiquity."
"Oho, the Shadowless Divine Thief!"
Seo Yugyeom exclaimed, eyes shining.
People scoffed at thieves, calling them petty vermin, but Seo Yugyeom the assassin saw it differently. A thief and an assassin were separated by a hair's breadth. Hold treasure in your hand and you were a thief; hold a man's life there, and you were an assassin. If the legends of the Shadowless Divine Thief were all true, the man would have ranked among the deadliest killers of his age.
Returning to his seat, Seo Yugyeom turned to Jin Seongun.
"Shall we go catch this thief, then?"
"..."
"He really could be the Shadowless Divine Thief's disciple, you know!"
Jin Seongun answered with unbroken silence.
The Shadowless Divine Thief's disciple was sitting right here. And for the record, he had no interest whatsoever in the underwear of the Martial Alliance's Hundred Strategist.