It's Not Such a Great Sum of Money, Is It?
Not such a great sum of money, was it?
The marketplace of Yichang was abuzz from the early hours of the morning. Word had spread among the martial artists who had gathered to catch the Great Thief.
"They say the Mad Hen has descended on Yichang?"
The wandering swordsmen who heard the rumor perked up with interest. For vagabonds drifting from corner to corner of the world, a chance to lay eyes on a martial artist as famous as the Mad Hen was rare indeed.
The late-generation disciples of the Orthodox factions, on the other hand, decided that today of all days they had best watch their step. More than a few had been beaten half to death for crossing paths with the Mad Hen at the wrong moment.
But before long, a second rumor chased the first: the Mad Hen had singled out one particular inn, claiming its head chef and waiter were the Great Thief — and that the informant was none other than the Formation Dragon of the Sama Clan.
Once that story made the rounds, the Orthodox disciples could no longer restrain their curiosity, and they all began streaming toward Seongun Inn.
And so it was that every manner of martial artist in Yichang converged on the inn.
The beggars of the Beggars' Sect, Elder Byeok at their head, ransacked every last corner of Seongun Inn with dogged thoroughness.
Sima Hui waited for the results of the search, a trace of unease gnawing at him.
Something has gone wrong.
He had only meant to put Seongun Inn through the wringer. Well — yes, he had harbored his suspicions. After all, it was strange for masters of that caliber to appear out of thin air as though dropped from the heavens.
Moreover, the timing matched up with uncanny precision — the period when the inn's staff had been away lined up exactly with the thief's activities.
But there was no decisive logic to string those suspicions together. And so he had simply let it slide, like tossing a bone to the Mad Hen out of the goodness of his heart.
He hadn't imagined she would drag him all the way here. He certainly hadn't imagined she would announce, before everyone, that he was the informant.
It had been Sima Hui's mistake to underestimate the Beggars' Sect's Mad Hen.
And he had even less anticipated that every martial artist in Yichang would come swarming to this one spot.
If Seongun Inn's innocence were established, Sima Hui would be publicly disgraced in the most humiliating way imaginable.
He glanced out past the inn's doors. Everyone was lingering outside, too intimidated by Elder Byeok's fearsome presence to venture inside.
Then he caught sight of Namgung Rin. Her lovely face seemed to be saying something to him.
Idiot.
Perhaps it was only his imagination. Even so, he found it hard to keep looking at her face and turned his head away with effort.
The search did not take long. Seongun Inn was not a large establishment to begin with.
Still, the Beggars' Sect beggars proved to be masters of this sort of work, and they truly left nothing untouched. They went through the kitchen and every storage cabinet, tapping the ceiling and the floorboards with their knuckles as they moved.
Along the way they even discovered a small hidden compartment in the ceiling that Jin Seongun himself had never known about. When they pried out a loose panel, a space lay behind it — and contrary to Sima Hui's hopes, all it contained was a handful of red beans and a paper talisman.
Before Jin Seongun had bought the place, it had been notorious as a haunted inn, so this was surely the mark of some previous owner's attempt at exorcism. Of course, a few beans and a talisman could do nothing against beings like the Sword Immortal or the Blood Demon.
As the search dragged on, Elder Byeok grew just as anxious. She drove her subordinates ever harder, until at last she stepped forward to search herself.
Nothing was found in the inn.
Then, in Seo Yugyeom's quarters, several blades and daggers turned up, briefly raising an uproar —
"What. What is it."
"See here! These are hardly the belongings an ordinary cook ought to keep in his quarters!"
"The world's a rough place these days. Bandits will come swarming in broad daylight to strip a man's room bare — I'd say a cook keeping a blade or two is only sensible."
"......"
"So it's fine for a beggar to carry knives, but not a cook? Is that how it works? You people are hilarious."
Seo Yugyeom had never hidden his martial prowess in the first place, and a few sabers and daggers hardly constituted evidence of any crime, so the matter passed without incident.
Next was Jin Seongun's quarters.
As it happened, the most anxious person there was not Sima Hui, nor Elder Byeok — it was Jin Seongun himself. Not a hint of it showed on his face, but in his heart he felt he stood at the greatest crisis of his life.
...I completely forgot about that.
His quarters contained a closet that led to the Realm of Martial Gods. Being treated as a thief was absurd, and his conscience was clean, so he had agreed to the search without protest.
The moment one beggar moved to step into Jin Seongun's quarters —
"One moment."
Jin Seongun stopped him. Jin Seongun, who had remained perfectly calm and said nothing all this while. In that instant, the eyes of Elder Byeok and the beggars gleamed.
"......"
An awkward silence hung in the air for a moment. The beggars traded glances among themselves. Elder Byeok stood ready to strike at any instant.
Jin Seongun took a moment to choose his words, then spoke.
"I will go first."
"So be it."
Elder Byeok studied him closely as she nodded, and a sharp intuition pierced through her mind.
There is something in that room!
Jin Seongun opened the door and stepped inside. Elder Byeok and the Beggars' Sect disciples followed, along with Seo Yugyeom and the young disciples.
Jin Seongun's room was spare to the point of austerity. Furniture and everything else — only the bare minimum required for daily life. That had always been his nature.
Just as disappointment began to creep across the beggars' faces —
"We will open the closet as well."
One of the beggars approached the closet.
"...Very well."
Jin Seongun nodded. A reaction utterly different from everything that had come before.
Elder Byeok forcibly suppressed the corner of her mouth as it curled upward and spoke.
"Step aside. I will check it myself."
Elder Byeok walked up to the closet.
Seo Yugyeom was watching the closet with genuine curiosity. That space had struck even him as deeply peculiar.
Before Elder Shin Mok had built the quarters, it had been nothing more than a lonely storage shed sitting in the backyard. Jin Seongun would often tell him not to open that shed carelessly.
Then, when the quarters were built, the shed had been transformed wholesale into a closet inside Jin Seongun's room.
It was a strange product of Shin Mok's insistence on building the man a proper home and Jin Seongun's stubborn refusal to get rid of the shed.
What in the world is in there?
Before Seo Yugyeom could voice the very same question, Elder Byeok spat the words out first.
"There's something in here, isn't there?"
"Nothing at all. It's merely a closet-like storeroom I use when I wish to quietly practice my energy circulation."
It wasn't a lie. The Yeowol Mind Art gathered and refined his internal energy on its own all day long, so he only ever needed deliberate circulation when training alongside the Martial Gods.
Jin Seongun stared at the closet for a moment, then suddenly recalled what the Martial Gods had said at their first meeting.
"What matters is that you and we were fated to meet like this, and that we each prove useful to the other."
The Divine Thief in particular had stressed fate again and again. Fate — he had called it the design of Heaven itself, the thread that bound Jin Seongun to the Martial Gods.
That was why the Martial Gods had tried so earnestly to persuade him at that first meeting. Jin Seongun was the only channel through which they could exert any influence upon the mortal world.
Then does that mean no one else can enter the Realm of Martial Gods?
But the previous innkeepers had all testified to the presence of a ghost.
Jin Seongun turned the problem over in his mind for a while, then gave up. Honestly, he had no idea. No one but himself had ever opened that closet, at least not in recent memory.
He considered two possible outcomes.
The first: Elder Byeok opened the door, and the vast expanse of the Realm of Martial Gods unfurled before everyone's eyes.
...Would that be so bad?
What could they possibly do to the Martial Gods? It might even turn out to be a good thing. If another madman like Sikmugaek appeared in the future, he could always introduce them.
And if nothing happened at all? That, too, would be fine. He could settle the whole affair for fifty silver taels and be done with it.
In the meantime, Elder Byeok was deliberately stalling, passing orders to her subordinates through secret transmission, each man to his assigned position.
If something unsavory lurked within, the culprit might bolt the instant the door opened. Mad Hen she might be called, but she was an elder of the Beggars' Sect all the same.
Her subordinates slipped into place, cutting off every avenue of retreat — and at that moment, Elder Byeok flung the closet open with all her strength.
The search concluded.
Elder Byeok and the Beggars' Sect disciples, Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom, Tang Soyeon, Baek Sang, even Baek Seol — when they had all filed back outside, Sima Hui and the assembled martial artists regarded them with tense faces.
"Well? What did you find?"
Sima Hui could not hold back. Elder Byeok trudged toward him, step by heavy step.
His nerves stretched taut within. The stench no longer even registered.
When she had come right up before him, she abruptly raised her hand — and Sima Hui flinched against his will.
Everyone assumed Elder Byeok was about to slap him down for his trouble.
But contrary to all expectation, she laid her hand gently on Sima Hui's shoulder. In an instant, the color returned to his face.
So my suspicions were right after all!
Then Elder Byeok continued in a soft, low voice.
"Fifty taels isn't such a great sum of money, is it, boy?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Eldest son of the Sama Clan — that much would be pocket change for you, no? Wouldn't it?"
"......"
Elder Byeok put on a sheepish smile.
The martial artists had all heard the terms of the wager by now. The meaning of her words was unmistakable.
The innocence of Seongun Inn's head chef and waiter. The Mad Hen and a dozen-odd Beggars' Sect disciples had searched with intent, and found nothing out of place.
Which meant: Sima Hui had lost.
Elder Byeok scratched her head and addressed Jin Seongun.
"Haha, we've caused a great misunderstanding, and I apologize for it. The promised compensation will be delivered by this young man here — the eldest son of the Sama Clan and the Formation Dragon of the Five Dragons and Three Phoenixes, no less. You needn't worry about him welching on the deal."
As she declared this with evident pride, Sima Hui wished the earth would open and swallow him whole.
Oblivious or indifferent, Elder Byeok wore the satisfied grin of a man whose stomach troubles had finally passed.
No matter how thoroughly they searched, nothing unusual had surfaced, and midway through, the Poison Phoenix had testified that the inn was one expressly guaranteed by both the Wudang Sect and the Tang Clan.
She should have mentioned that from the start.
Even for Elder Byeok, ignoring the guarantee of Wudang and the Tang Clan was not an option. Her gaze toward Jin Seongun took on a new light.
If he had flaunted those connections from the beginning, everything would have been settled easily. But that outrageous young man had done no such thing. He had acted as though he and those towering powers were utterly separate things.
That, if anything, moved Elder Byeok's heart. Young people these days reached for their backers at the slightest pretext — and here was one who did not.
"We've raised quite a ruckus since dawn, and I'm embarrassed for it. Hahaha, well — business is concluded, so we'll be on our way—"
She was on the verge of making as boisterous an exit as she had made an entrance when —
"The Mad Hen has some nerve, doesn't she. All brazen now."
Elder Byeok's footsteps halted dead.
A heartbeat later, she whirled around, fire spilling from her eyes. The voice was not young, so she took the speaker for some deranged vagrant. Her body was already loose and itching for a fight, and this looked like a splendid opportunity.
She raked her gaze across the packed crowd — and froze at a single point.
A white-haired old man was glaring back at her with eyes clearer and deeper than any young man's could ever hope to be.
"You've thrown every tantrum there is to throw, and now you mean to dump the responsibility on that boy and run off?"
"...Senior White Cloud Sword."
Elder Byeok turned respectful in a way rarely seen from her.
The White Cloud Sword Hyeon Un was an elder of considerable weight even to her. The gap in their years was significant, his strength far surpassed her own — and above all, that notorious stubborn temper of his made him lash out with violence at anyone whose face displeased him, rank and age notwithstanding.
Thus, of the handful of people in all the world that Elder Byeok feared, Hyeon Un stood near the top.
And of that same tiny handful, the next two were the Poison Lord and the Godly Wood.
Meeting even one of them was a rare event. But all three standing shoulder to shoulder, glaring at her at once — that had never happened in her life.
Whatever else might be said of Elder Byeok, the honorifics flowed out of her unprompted.
"Seniors — what brings you to this place...?"
"SILENCE!!"
Hyeon Un roared a Lion's Cry laden with internal energy — and almost simultaneously, Dang Taesan's savage aura pressed down heavily upon the surroundings.
How dare they — this is my disciple's—!
The boy who will marry into my Tang Clan—!
They had acted in perfect unison, as though by prior arrangement.
Hyeon Un and Dang Taesan stood staring at each other with wide eyes. An awkward silence followed.
Then, all at once, the flames of rivalry kindled in both men's gazes. If it came to deciding whose man Seongun truly was, they each felt they would need to rage harder and strike faster than the other.
Elder Byeok could not begin to imagine where any of this was headed. But one thing she grasped instinctively.
I have touched something that must not be touched!