The Mad Chicken (1)
The backyard had grown somewhat cramped since the recent construction of the new quarters behind the inn.
Fifteen paces at most—close enough to reach out and touch one another.
Seo Yugyeom, wearing his usual placid expression—the kind that might, by some readings, be called bored—addressed Sima Hui.
"So what's your grievance exactly, you plague-ridden bastard?"
Sima Hui shot back a look of sheer incredulity.
"Do you know who I am before you speak to me like that?"
"Should a cook at an inn have to know that?"
A thin thread of derision escaped the corner of Sima Hui's mouth.
This inn was unquestionably strange. Not only the waiter but the cook as well had evidently mastered real martial arts.
At this point, a thought crept in—was this place even an inn at all, or should it be classified as a martial force in its own right?
Sima Hui resolved to teach these insolent wretches a lesson.
Why, among all the rising talents of the world, he was counted as one of the Five Dragons and Three Phoenixes.
The moment Sima Hui's towering inner power, bred and honed in one of the great clans, stirred and coiled to envelop his whole body—
Srrang—!
A single blade of displaced air whistled through the silence.
For an instant, Sima Hui's mind went blank.
Right before his eyes, a cold short blade was resting against his throat, just below his Adam's apple.
He hadn't even been able to follow the movement.
"Hey."
A low, flattened voice followed.
Seo Yugyeom's jet-black eyes, unreadable and fathomless as ink, fixed quietly on Sima Hui.
"You've never died before, have you?"
That light jest did not register to Sima Hui as a joke at all.
He understood it instinctively.
Those eyes.
They held a coldness he had never once encountered in his life.
This man could kill him where he stood, if he simply willed it.
Sima Hui's true specialty was not razor-sharp strikes or close-quarters technique but the ever-shifting art of formations.
But with a blade bared at his throat at point-blank range, no formation in existence was of any use.
Sima Hui buried his tension.
There was nothing to gain by baring his nerves now.
Instead, looking down at Seo Yugyeom with a composure he had deliberately manufactured, he spoke.
"Just what is this inn?"
"A restaurant with good food."
"……"
"Or your burial plot."
Death kept sliding out of Seo Yugyeom's mouth.
In truth, Seo Yugyeom was feeling the impulse to kill this arrogant little bastard on the spot.
But it was not the uncontrollable killing intent of his past.
Jin Seongun had surely known that too, and that was why he had let him go out there without a word of restraint.
Seo Yugyeom let a thread of cold qi circulate through him, chilling his emotions to frost, and went on.
"If you want to trample on how other people make their living, you'd better be ready to put your life on the line too. I don't know or care whether you're the Formation Dragon of the Five Dragons or the Dirt Dragon—a worm."
"……"
"Want to keep going? Or will you get the hell out."
Sima Hui said nothing.
It was answer enough.
Seo Yugyeom let out a short snort of laughter, gave Sima Hui's shoulder a light pat, and strolled back inside as though nothing had happened.
Inside the inn, Jin Seongun was already paying the whole affair no mind, as if he'd known every detail before it occurred.
Only Seomun Ak kept darting nervous glances at Seo Yugyeom, his face tight with tension.
As Seo Yugyeom headed for the kitchen, he tossed a remark at him.
"The kid's tamer than I expected."
"……"
Seomun Ak was utterly dumbfounded.
In all the world, surely only Seo Yugyeom—that lunatic—would call Sima Hui 'tame.'
You're so unhinged that everyone else just looks gentle by comparison…
Seo Yugyeom narrowed his eyes at him.
"I can hear you. I hear everything."
Seomun Ak startled badly and hurriedly busied himself with something else.
Chuckling at the sight, Seo Yugyeom disappeared into the kitchen.
"This damn inn just keeps attracting weirdos."
Han Seongchun, in the middle of stir-frying sweet-and-sour pork tenderloin, nodded silently in agreement.
"And yet you're the strangest one in here."
"What? Why me?"
Han Seongchun answered only with a shrug of his shoulders.
Sima Hui stood blankly for a moment after entering the inn. Everyone was looking at him.
Before long, he gathered his belongings without a word and turned toward the door.
Some emotion—rage, or perhaps bewilderment—churned and bubbled inside him.
But he knew that making a further scene in this inn, of all places, would be a fool's errand.
Just as he was about to step through the door, he suddenly stopped and turned back.
Namgung Rin was still sitting serenely in her seat.
As Sima Hui stared at her hard, she looked up with indifferent eyes.
"What is it?"
"You're not leaving?"
"The food just came out."
"……"
Sima Hui let out a long, long sigh.
In the end, he had no choice but to walk out of the inn alone.
* * *
Back at Muhan Bank, Sima Hui brushed past the bowing greeting of Buntaju, the branch manager, without so much as a nod, and went straight to his quarters.
The bank had set aside its largest and most luxurious room for the eldest young master of the Sama Clan.
That insufferable little…
Buntaju cursed Sima Hui over and over in his heart.
Inside his quarters, Sima Hui paced the room for a long while, lost in thought.
"No matter how I think about it, something doesn't add up."
He had been muttering this to himself for some time when a knock sounded at the door and one of his subordinates entered.
"Young Master, is it wise to leave things as they are?"
"Speak plainly."
"They say the rising talents of the Wudang Sect and the Luoyang Sword Clan have arrived in the Yichang area. Word has it that a number of wanderers have also come hunting the bounty on the Great Thief's head."
"And?"
"They're already scouring every corner of Yichang with bloodshot eyes looking for the thief, while we…"
"A waste of effort."
Sima Hui declared flatly.
"The man won't go anywhere else. He will come back to this bank. Count on it."
Just as an assassin who fails a contract sharpens his blade and returns all the more dangerous, so a thief brazen enough to humiliate them was certain to set foot in Muhan Bank again.
"Ah—was it really that waiter, then? The one who caught the thief coming and going that day?"
At his subordinate's careful question, Sima Hui's gaze turned razor-sharp and fixed on him.
Was that not the same as admitting that man Jin Seongun had been right?
The subordinate coughed awkwardly and dropped his head.
Of everything, Sima Hui could not get past that one point.
How did he notice?
That day, the entire bank had been draped in the Celestial Eight Constellations Formation, the pride of the Sama Clan.
Within that formation, every flow of energy tangled hopelessly upon itself.
Even accomplished masters lost not only their sense of direction but the ability to properly govern their own inner power.
Even those who had laid the formation—that is, his own clan—had detected no trace whatsoever of the thief.
And yet that waiter had noticed.
Had even pointed it out, calm as still water.
The same question hammered relentlessly through his skull.
"How in the world?"
"Pardon?"
The subordinate asked back, uncomprehending.
Sima Hui judged that this was no longer something he should gnaw on alone.
"Find out everything there is to know about that lot. In detail."
"You mean Seongun Inn?"
Without a word, Sima Hui drew out a heavy coin pouch from beneath the table and handed it to the man. It weighed like a bag stuffed full with gold.
"If you must, make use of the Beggars' Sect or Hao Gate—it doesn't matter which. Spend whatever it takes."
"Understood."
Taking the pouch, the subordinate bowed with proper form and left the room.
Alone, Sima Hui calmly revisited the strange events of the day, one by one.
The war of words he had waged with that waiter at the bank.
The transformation in that wastrel Seomun Ak.
And that utterly uncanny cook.
There was something there. Beyond any doubt.
They could not possibly be merely a waiter and a cook who happened to know a little martial arts.
No—they must not be.
As he filled his teacup, Sima Hui's face flushed faintly for an instant.
That sensation he'd had when facing the cook.
It had been fear. Unmistakably.
That he—he, the eldest young master of the Sama Clan—had felt such a thing toward a nameless cook buried in some backwater inn was unbearable in its humiliation.
Sima Hui exhaled a long, hot breath.
Not two hours had passed before his subordinate came rushing back to his quarters, urgency written all over him.
In his hands was a meticulously sealed bundle of documents.
"Information obtained through Hao Gate. Given that the man is a waiter, I judged Hao Gate the better source than the Beggars' Sect."
"Good. Wait outside."
Once the man withdrew, Sima Hui tore open the sealed envelope at once.
Inside, dense lines of tiny script crowded sheet after sheet of paper.
He read through them one by one with a composed mind—until, at some point, his eyes began to widen as if they could not believe what they were seeing.
Then, all at once, his heart lurched as if it had plummeted to his feet.
"…Sikmugaek?"
Was this not the very devil designated a First-Class Murim Public Enemy?
As the story went, not long ago, that man Sikmugaek's movements had overlapped with the whereabouts of several orthodox rising talents, and a great uproar had erupted over it.
At that time, the ones involved had been Tang Soyeon of the Tang Clan, two rising talents of the Wudang Sect, Seok Tae-shin of the Seok Clan Manor, and…
"Seomun Ak."
It was on account of that affair, apparently, that the man had come to work as a waiter at Seongun Inn.
The influence of the Seomun Clan's patriarch had surely played its part as well.
The head of the Seomun Clan was an unquestioned master—a man skilled in both politics and self-preservation, and no dullard. That he had planted his own son in that tiny inn carried no small meaning.
As Sima Hui read on, his eyes widened to a degree beyond all comparison with before.
"Sa-Saryeonggeuk, it says?"
For once in his life, his words stuttered.
That was the second-in-command of Sichuan's Black Path, was it not?
And the record said the man had died.
Killed—by Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom of Seongun Inn.
Even if the Tang Clan had lent its aid…
"I see it now."
At last, it made sense.
That cook, however much he had borrowed the Tang Clan's strength, was a master capable of standing against the Vice Alliance Leader of the Thousand Poisons Alliance itself.
What Sima Hui had felt in that instant facing him was, perhaps, only natural.
A strange relief washed over him.
Having read through the substantial material, he combed meticulously through even the minor incidents and rumors.
The most startling fact of all was that these two men, possessed of such martial attainment, seemed to have simply fallen out of the sky.
There was not a single record of them from before they began running the inn.
Especially the cook—for a master of that caliber to have no history at all was simply impossible.
The implication was plain.
"Their pasts are dirty ones. The more I learn, the more suspicious they become."
Just as Sima Hui was murmuring to himself, his subordinate came sprinting into the room with a shout.
"Y-Young Master! Elder Byeok of the Beggars' Sect has arrived!"
The man's face had already drained bone-white.
Sima Hui's expression froze solid in an instant as well.
It was warranted.
Byeok Cheongae, elder of the Beggars' Sect.
Her epithet was none other than the Mad Chicken.
Not a mad dog—a mad chicken.
Her temperament was so wild and vicious that even her fellow beggars in the Sect avoided her, and once her blood was up, she would raise hell even in the Alliance Leader's own hall.
Only her martial prowess and abilities were so outstanding that she had seized an elder's seat at a comparatively young age…
A creature whose wretched temperament has left her with no faction whatsoever—virtually no chance of ever becoming Sect Leader.
There were even rumors that within the Beggars' Sect she had been entirely excluded from any post related to information.
A beggar with no information and nothing but brute strength.
In a word: a presence from whom no practical help or reward could be expected, and who delivered nothing but exhaustion and grief.
Before Sima Hui could so much as utter a word of restraint—
A dark-skinned middle-aged woman strode into the room, trailing a ferocious stench.
She settled into a chair as if it were her own private parlor, flung her foot up onto the tea table, and spoke.
"Formation Dragon! It's been a while, hasn't it? That greasy little face hasn't changed a bit."
"…It is an honor to see you, Elder."
Sima Hui, rising with the greatest reluctance, gave a slight bow of his head.
"How goes the thief-hunting?"
"…Well. It's, ah, proceeding."
"And the clues you've secured?"
Such an attitude—as though he were duty-bound to hand over his intelligence to her.
Sima Hui sighed inwardly.
This affair had the pride of several great clans and sects riding on it.
There was not the slightest reason to share intelligence with an outsider like her.
The problem was simply that the outsider in question was a mad chicken.
If she took even the smallest offense, he did not dare imagine how obsessively and viciously she would torment him hereafter.
If he clumsily tried to hide the information here, he would find himself torn apart by this mad chicken long before the thief was ever caught.
And that was when it happened.
Sima Hui's eye fell upon the documents bearing the intelligence on Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom.
A thin smile soon crept across his lips.
"Well… there's no firmly established evidence yet, but there are one or two parties who bother me too much to simply let pass."
"Ohhh, is that so?"
Elder Byeok, who had been sprawled across her chair, half-raised her body. Her eyes glittered with curiosity.
Sima Hui deliberately put on a pained expression and added,
"As I said, though, there's no proper physical evidence or basis yet…"
"Evidence? You go and see with your own eyes, that's all there is to it! Stop dithering and out with it! I'll go and verify it myself."
Sima Hui played the reluctant game a while longer, letting the Mad Chicken stew in her impatience.
Before long she could bear it no longer and pressed him hard, and only then did Sima Hui open his mouth as though truly left with no other choice.
"There's a place called Seongun Inn…"