A Thief!
"Thief!"
Elder Byeok of the Beggars' Sect, the Mad Hen herself, was blinking her eyes with a face gone uncharacteristically meek.
Who were the ones bellowing their wrath down at her right now?
Hyeon Un of the Wudang Sect, and Dang Taesan of the Tang Clan.
These were the masters who, in all but name, moved the orthodox martial world—men whose word swayed everything that happened within the righteous factions. To the young talents gathered here, they were figures so towering it was hard to even meet their gaze, beings not unlike immortals. And to herself, a woman who had at least lived long enough to earn a measure of respect, they remained endlessly difficult and lofty seniors.
Granted, Elder Byeok had once, for reasons of her own, gone on a rampage even inside the Martial Alliance Leader's office……
But that was only because the Alliance Leader was the sort who wouldn't actually hit me.
Hyeon Un and Dang Taesan were different. One was the most stubborn old man in all the martial world; the other, the Grand Elder of the Tang Clan who had gone mad for silver. As unruly as she was—no, quite possibly even more so. The kind of men who would do absolutely anything if pushed the wrong way.
Having finished her calculations, Elder Byeok spoke with a servile bend to her posture.
"Um. Might I ask what exactly this is about……"
The one who came at her was Hyeon Un. White hair long enough to mark him for an immortal streamed behind him as he stepped forward and said,
"Elder Byeok. You used your authority and martial might to threaten a man who runs his shop honestly. Do you deny it?"
"That was an investigation into the Great Thief—"
"Your evidence?"
Elder Byeok looked at Sama Hui.
But Sama Hui showed no intention of opening his mouth. What he had presented from the start were scraps of suspicion that refused to connect—not a shred of proof tying this inn to the Great Thief.
"……I have none."
"No evidence, and yet you pressed an honest commoner by force. And having done so, you refuse to answer for the consequences, pushing the compensation off onto a junior far above your own standing!"
"Now hold on, he's hardly an honest commoner—"
"Silence!"
Hyeon Un's fury erupted once more. His qi burst outward in every direction, and the young talents and wanderers nearby stumbled backward.
Still, Elder Byeok felt wronged in her own way. Since when were that inn's waiter and assassin honest commoners? The waiter in particular was a master who had casually brushed aside even her full-force strike.
Of course, if she actually said that aloud, Hyeon Un looked ready to draw the Taichi Sword on the spot.
When she shut her mouth, Dang Taesan's voice followed.
"I hear the compensation was a mere fifty taels of silver."
"A mere…? That's more than enough to cover a full day's business at that inn……"
She hunched her shoulders and fell silent again—for Dang Taesan's deep verdant eyes had flashed once in the sunlight.
"And the inn's honor?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You dragged them through the mud before everyone's eyes, like common thieves. When they are nothing more than an honest waiter and cook, living each day by the sweat of their brows."
They're not just a waiter and a cook, though.
She kept that thought to herself as well. At the realm Hyeon Un and Dang Taesan occupied, there was no way they didn't know the two had trained in martial arts.
The situation was clear as day. Two of the era's most celebrated masters were shielding that inn. She didn't know why. But it was plain enough that they cherished it deeply—deeply enough to work themselves into genuine fury over it.
"……Then what am I supposed to do?"
At Elder Byeok's question, the crushing pressure from Hyeon Un and Dang Taesan eased somewhat.
Even a mad hen learns a little human decency once she's old enough, Hyeon Un thought, and spoke.
"Three hundred taels."
"…?"
Elder Byeok wanted to wash her ears out with water.
Then Dang Taesan, standing beside him, added, "Raise it yourself, without the Sama Clan's help. Swallow your pride, go grovel to the Dragon Head Gang's chief, and who knows—he might even lend it to you."
"I'd count myself lucky if he didn't throw me into a cauldron alive."
"Hmm. That wouldn't be entirely bad either."
Elder Byeok heaved a long sigh and looked at Jin Seongun. What on earth was going through that man's head? Even in a situation like this, his expression gave nothing away.
Before long, she spoke.
"……Could you knock a bit off?"
"No."
That was Hyeon Un's answer. Jin Seongun studied him for a moment, then scratched his head and added, "He says no."
"……"
Elder Byeok despaired. There was simply nowhere left to run.
At last she lowered her head.
"……Fine. I'll be off, then, seniors."
"Where to?"
"To…… earn some money, I suppose……"
Elder Byeok's shoulders drooped like a sick hen's.
She had never earned a single coin in her life. Whatever alms she collected posing as a beggar, she always tossed to the Beggars' Sect branches nearby.
To her, being told to come up with three hundred taels of silver sounded like being ordered to pluck stars from the sky.
There was, however, one way.
The bounty on the Great Thief was forty taels of gold.
Converted to silver, that came to a full eight hundred taels. Enough to repay three hundred and still leave a handsome remainder.
As Elder Byeok walked off doing the math in her head, Hyeon Un's parting words drifted after her.
"Surely an elder of the Beggars' Sect wouldn't break a promise she made with her own mouth?"
"……No, Elder."
She answered with a sigh caught in her voice. However unjust the situation felt, the truth was she had never once broken her word in her entire life.
Only then did Hyeon Un and Dang Taesan nod in satisfied unison.
From that day on, all manner of rumors about Seongun Inn spread openly among the martial artists of Yichang.
The waiter who drowned the Formation Dragon Sama Hui.
The waiter sheltered by elders of both the Wudang Sect and the Tang Clan.
Truly provocative fare. The young talents, who had swaggered into Yichang vowing to catch the thief and now had nothing to do but patrol in circles, had all night to chew the topic over.
And so the rumors spread at a staggering pace. As gossip always does, it swelled a little with every passing mouth.
Some even testified thus:
"I was standing in line in front of that inn a while back, and I swear I saw the Formation Dragon and the waiter going at it hammer and tongs right at the entrance."
"They say that rake Seomun Ak works under him too."
"You know that cook with the gloomy air about him? Hiding a dark past, they say."
"I heard the Formation Dragon brought Elder Byeok along out of a personal grudge, and still lost."
Astonishingly, grains of truth were mixed in there too—though they simply floated off into the void, buried under a mountain of wilder tales.
For all these reasons, Seongun Inn was packed to the rafters. Han Seongchun and Seo Yugyeom had to work their woks without pause, and Jin Seongun and Seomun Ak were forever hauling food back and forth.
And through it all, Jin Seongun's mood was far from good.
Because every soul crowding the inn was a martial artist.
Not that I mind big appetites……
The wine and food they put away dwarfed anything an ordinary customer could manage. The real problem was that once the thief was caught, these people would all leave. The customers who might have become true regulars were keeping their distance, cowed by the wall-to-wall martial artists, and had stopped coming altogether.
A clear boon in the short term. An equally clear liability over the long haul.
That was why Jin Seongun kept sighing.
Granted, the young talents' characteristic brand of belligerent chivalry contributed no small amount to the weight on his mind.
"What's he doing here again? Has Sama Hui no shame at all?"
The moment Tang Soyeon stepped into the inn and spotted Sama Hui, she denounced him without a shred of subtlety. Sama Hui turned his face away, and Baekri Jung, dining beside him, answered in his stead.
"Lady Tang. The proprietor has said he will not turn guests away. I don't believe that gives you the right to object."
"Excuse me?"
Tang Soyeon looked at Jin Seongun with eyes demanding the truth. He gave a light nod. He had no particular reason to bar Sama Hui—the waiter in him did not turn customers away over private grudges.
Tang Soyeon clicked her tongue and went to sit with Baek Sang and Baek Seol.
Even so, the atmosphere inside the inn had split neatly in two.
The young talents led by Tang Soyeon, Baek Sang, Baek Seol, and Seomun Ak on one side. On the other, those closest to Sama Hui, Namgung Rin, and Baekri Jung.
So this is what the orthodox world is really like, Jin Seongun thought. The orthodox factions of the age were divided by invisible walls—region, temperament, history, the lineage of their martial arts, their role within the Martial Alliance. A tangle of factors had woven those unseen factions together.
Deciding that the life of a martial artist looked thoroughly exhausting, Jin Seongun—who would one day, as clan head, watch Tang Soyeon live her whole life in exactly this kind of rivalry—quietly set a free bottle of wine down at her table.
Immediately, someone spoke up.
"Why does that table alone drink for free? Does this inn discriminate between guests so brazenly?"
"……"
One of the Sama Hui faction—known in shorthand as the anti-Seongun crowd. A young talent in a blue-white martial uniform, spear strapped to his back, was glaring at Jin Seongun with open hostility.
Before Jin Seongun could return a word, Baek Sang, de facto head of the pro-Seongun side, erupted in towering rage.
"The proprietor is their friend before he is an innkeeper—of course he shows them favor! How does picking a fight over nothing all day long help anyone catch a thief?"
"Wh-what did you just say?!"
"You heard me!!"
And so it went, on and on. Arguments broke out, bystanders intervened, the rivals glared daggers and held their tongues—then, the moment no one was watching, the bickering resumed until someone stepped in again.
Jin Seongun shook his head at the quarreling behind him.
For all that they couldn't stand the sight of each other, the reason even Sama Hui kept coming back to this inn was simple: the young talents shared their intelligence on the thief here. A temporary alliance of mutual loathing, you might call it.
Now that this dynamic had taken hold, the moment the thief surfaced, word would reach Seongun Inn before anywhere else. In other words, whether he liked it or not, he could no longer stay away.
While Jin Seongun was kneading his temples, mercifully, mediators emerged from each camp and the argument died down. What followed was, once again, talk of the Great Thief.
Jin Seongun listened closely—he too was curious about the man being called the Divine Thief's heir.
"He may already be gone, for all we know."
When Baek Sang said this, heads nodded all around. Yichang had been astonishingly quiet these past few days. If anything, the patrolling young talents—swords at their hips, poking into every alley—had only made the town feel more disorderly.
Jin Seongun thought Baek Sang had a point. Judging by the thief's movements so far, enough time had passed for him to strip half a dozen other regions bare already.
Not a bad outcome. If the verdict came down that the thief had fled, all the martial artists roiling Yichang would pack up and leave with him.
But Jin Seongun's hopes were shattered in less than a day.
The next morning.
Jin Seongun made his way to the inn feeling a touch wearier than usual.
"……Maybe I should start turning people away."
Hosting martial artists of clashing temperaments under one roof was clearly asking too much. He had seated every last one of them out of a waiter's pride and a proprietor's iron rule, but day by day it was becoming a chore.
If he had to choose just one faction to serve, there was nothing to ponder—his friends, obviously. And then the anti-Seongun crowd led by Sama Hui would no doubt turn into a mob of troublemakers from hell.
Jin Seongun was rubbing his throbbing forehead as he stepped out to the inn's entrance—and froze, blinking at the absurdity before him.
Above the inn's entrance.
Something that should, by all rights, have been there was gone.
"What are you staring at?"
Seo Yugyeom emerged behind him, then Han Seongchun after him, each in turn wearing much the same expression.
"The—the signboard. Where's the signboard?"
The hanging plaque of Seongun Inn. In the spot where it had always hung, a sheet of paper had been pasted, inscribed with the word Justice.
Justice
A young talent chancing down the street eyed the scene quietly for a moment—then his eyes went wide and he shouted,
"Thief!"
He had even laced the cry with internal energy, and it rang out thunderous and clear.
In an instant, every martial artist in Yichang came surging toward Seongun Inn.