Does This Look Like a Favor?
It was late at night.
With the day's business long over, Seo Yugyeom, who had been sitting cross-legged and staring blankly into nothing for a while now, finally rose from his spot.
What on earth is he up to these days?
He'd noticed Jin Seongun playing the part of a thief of late. Not that he could have missed it—after being glued to each other's side every single day for the past few months, a mere mask wasn't enough to fool him.
Seo Yugyeom headed straight for Jin Seongun's quarters.
"Hey. You in there?"
There was no answer.
Seo Yugyeom nodded as if that settled the matter. "Figured as much. So what did he go steal tonight, I wonder."
With that, he stepped out of the inn.
Somehow, he was going to find out what this lunatic was up to.
The reason was simple.
It just looked fun.
Seo Yugyeom walked straight through the heart of Yichang's main thoroughfare.
For some reason, the post-peak cultivators who had long since given up on their martial ambitions were tearing through the night streets like mad.
Every one of them clutched a note that read Justice. Evidently, the thief had kicked up another ruckus.
Whether it was the real thief or Jin Seongun, though, was anyone's guess.
Seo Yugyeom searched every corner of Yichang. He had a certain knack for concealment himself, and he was confident that if he put his mind to it, he would find Jin Seongun.
But there was nothing anywhere.
About an hour had passed by the time most of the post-peak cultivators gave up and began drifting back to their lodgings.
He definitely left to steal something, though...
Jin Seongun vanishing in the middle of the night was an extremely rare occurrence. No—setting aside the current affair, it had never happened even once.
As far as Seo Yugyeom could tell, Jin Seongun had no interests in life beyond running the inn.
It wasn't for women, and it wasn't for drinking. And he was hardly the type to go strolling or sightseeing, either.
In other words, Jin Seongun's absence meant one thing: thievery.
"You in here?"
Seo Yugyeom lifted the lid of a cauldron at a dumpling house. Naturally, there was no one inside.
That was when it happened.
BANG!
Seo Yugyeom's head snapped around.
It had been faint, but unmistakable.
Glancing around, he saw that none of the other post-peak cultivators seemed to have heard a thing.
Seo Yugyeom felt a quiet glow of superiority as he sprinted toward the source of the sound.
A loud noise in the dead of night meant one of two things: the post-peak cultivators were brawling drunk, or Jin Seongun was up to something.
Both were equally entertaining, and so Seo Yugyeom's steps held not a shred of hesitation.
Old habits of an assassin, perhaps—Seo Yugyeom instantly calculated the direction and distance of the sound.
The place his calculations led him to was the Yichang branch of the Muhan Bank.
Word was that Jin Seongun had once clashed there with some fellow calling himself the Kiryong or whatever it was.
At the main gate, a hulking warrior stood with eyes blazing, glaring warily at his surroundings.
It was the kind of face most people would go far out of their way to avoid, but this did not apply to Seo Yugyeom.
He walked straight up to the hulk and said:
"Is Jin Seongun in there?"
The hulk glowered.
Seo Yugyeom held his gaze with his signature frost-laced eyes, and little by little, the hulk's glare softened.
See? This type always folds first.
Seo Yugyeom recited this immutable truth to himself and asked again.
"Answer me, you punk."
"......"
"Cat got your tongue?"
"He is not. Here."
Seo Yugyeom's eyes narrowed.
This bastard's attitude was so strange that he couldn't easily walk away. More than anything, if his calculation was right, the loud crash had definitely come from inside the bank.
"There was a loud noise from inside, wasn't there?"
"Never happened, sir."
"Now that's a lie, isn't it?"
Seo Yugyeom's suspicion deepened.
Just then, familiar faces arrived.
"Young Master Seo, what are you doing here?"
It was Tang Soyeon.
Behind her came Baek Sang, Baek Seol, and Seomun Ak as well.
Whether the four of them had been drinking or hunting the thief, they had arrived together.
Seo Yugyeom cut straight to the point. "Jin Seongun's probably in there, and this punk won't get out of the way."
"......"
The hulk's eyes grew even meeker than before.
As a member of the Sama Clan, he knew exactly who the post-peak cultivators standing before him were.
Disciples and scions of prestigious families were far more dangerous to him than a mere inn cook like Seo Yugyeom.
Tang Soyeon shot the hulk a narrow look. "Is what he says true?"
"He says it's true, so it's true."
"......"
Tang Soyeon stared at Seo Yugyeom with a look of sheer incredulity.
Still, she had heard plenty about his exploits in Deokyang, so she couldn't dismiss him outright.
"We'll just take a quick look. We're on friendly terms with Young Master Sama anyway, so there's no harm done."
But the hulk showed no sign of budging.
A brief standoff followed.
The hulk had a duty as gatekeeper to uphold, and he couldn't simply cave.
Tang Soyeon, Baek Sang, Baek Seol, and Seomun Ak all understood his position to some degree.
But Seo Yugyeom was different.
SLAP—!
The moment Seo Yugyeom's palm cracked across his cheek, the enormous hulk crumpled to the ground.
"I told you to move, didn't I."
Seo Yugyeom promptly stepped over the fallen man, pushed open the gate, and walked in.
The post-peak cultivators stared blankly at his retreating back for a moment, then hurriedly scrambled in after him.
Seomun Ak, trailing at the very rear, glanced at the fallen gatekeeper with—for some reason—an expression of deep fellow-feeling before following the others inside.
When Seo Yugyeom and the post-peak cultivators barged in without warning, the Sama Clan warriors came swarming out.
At their head was a middle-aged man with eyes as sharp as a dagger's point.
"Well now. What is the meaning of all this?"
The middle-aged man asked.
Tang Soyeon and the others looked somewhat flustered. The man blocking their path was Sama Won, a senior official of the Sama Clan itself.
Sama Won continued. "All of you, leave. Even if you are the young clan head of the Tang Clan, do you have the right to force your way into another family's grounds like this? I state plainly: this is grounds for a formal protest to the Tang Clan."
Tang Soyeon wavered.
Even by her own judgment, what they were doing now was a bit of a stretch.
But Seo Yugyeom had no intention of backing down.
"Jin Seongun's in there, isn't he?"
"...What did you say?"
Sama Won's tone changed in an instant. Unlike the post-peak cultivators of the Tang Clan, the Wudang Sect, and the Seomun Clan, there was no reason to show courtesy to a mere inn cook.
"Where's Sama Hui? With his skill, the normal thing would be for him to come sprinting out glaring the moment we made this much of a scene."
"H-how dare you spout such insolence!"
Astonishment washed over Sama Won's face.
In all his life, no one had ever dared such rudeness against the Sama Clan.
Of course, the accusation had struck its mark. The young master was currently maintaining a formation in the rear courtyard. The formation was still in its early stages, and the young master himself had stepped in personally to stabilize it firmly.
"The young master is away. The Great Thief has yet to be caught, you see."
"Is that so?"
Seo Yugyeom nodded and, with the most natural air in the world, moved to walk inside.
Sama Won's hand clamped onto his shoulder. In the next breath, blatant killing intent flared from the man.
At the same moment, Seo Yugyeom's eyes sank low and cold.
Putting on a show, are we?
Seo Yugyeom had been turning it over in his head the whole way here.
Why would Jin Seongun play at being a thief?
Presumably, to provoke the real thief. And in fact, ever since Jin Seongun had begun his activities, that thief had come slinking back.
Then what was the true purpose of the provocation? To drive the wretch somewhere predictable, of course.
By Seo Yugyeom's reckoning, today was the day. The marker stone had vanished last night. That was something no one but a madman could possibly steal—not a thing, but a boulder.
That suspicion, the crash he'd heard earlier, and the Sama Clan's wildly overblown reaction all corroborated it.
And so the doubt in Seo Yugyeom's heart sharpened into crystalline certainty.
"Let go."
But Sama Won's grip only tightened. Seo Yugyeom stared at the hand for a long moment, then drew the Heavenly Killing Short Knife from inside his coat.
SHING—!
Thin lines of blood welled up along Sama Won's elbow and wrist. Naturally, Seo Yugyeom hadn't cut anything off.
"Kghk!"
Sama Won doubled over, clutching his arm. Blood dripped steadily onto the ground.
Only muscle had been precisely severed, so a few months of recovery would suffice. Put the other way, he would be eating with his left hand for the next several months.
"Y-young Master!"
Tang Soyeon and the other post-peak cultivators jolted at Seo Yugyeom's impulsive act.
At the same instant, a roar went up from the main gate.
"What is the meaning of this outrage!"
Seo Yugyeom turned his head.
Sword Phoenix Namgung Rin and Baekri Jung stood at the gate, staring into the grounds with wide, startled eyes.
"It's a misunderstanding. These bastards are hiding Jin Seongun, see."
Seo Yugyeom said.
Then again, now that he thought about it, the knife work itself was no misunderstanding whatsoever, so he gave up on further explanation.
Baekri Jung, eldest son of the Baekri Clan, drew his greatsword and roared again.
"You wretch! How much must you look down on the Baekri and the whole of the martial world!"
Baekri Jung charged straight at Seo Yugyeom.
"W-wait a moment!"
Seomun Ak flared his qi and threw himself into the man's path. Baekri Jung glared at Seomun Ak for a heartbeat, then swung his greatsword.
Seomun Ak ducked frantically, and the greatsword grazed just barely above his hair.
In that instant, half of Seomun Ak's vision went red. He had been holding himself back with real diligence all this while, but at heart, his temperament was that of a first-rate lunatic.
"You insane bastard!"
Qi gathered in both of Seomun Ak's fists.
The courtyard was rapidly descending into chaos.
The Sama Clan warriors, having witnessed their senior official's injury with their own eyes, were in a state of extreme agitation.
Fighting spirit erupted from every direction.
Namgung Rin, unable to predict which way the mood would break, drew her Changcheon Sword as a precaution.
Her action provoked Baek Sang and Baek Seol.
"Why are you drawing your sword?"
"I wasn't—"
It was an utter madhouse.
Seo Yugyeom, having reduced the entire situation to shambles with just two slashes, strolled calmly inside as if none of it concerned him.
The Sama Clan warriors tried to block his way, but Tang Soyeon and Baek Seol stepped forward and blocked them instead.
Seo Yugyeom prowled through the Muhan Bank with a perfectly placid face. Before long, his steps brought him to the rear courtyard.
Sama Hui glanced briefly in his direction. There was something slightly off about his body's movements.
Seo Yugyeom identified the cause at once.
He's holding a formation.
As an assassin, he had learned a fair amount about formations himself.
Seo Yugyeom paused to consider. If he cut this wretch down where he stood, would the formation break?
Depending on the type, some formations actually became harder to break if the caster died.
After a moment's deliberation, he tried talking instead.
"Where are you hiding Jin Seongun?"
Sama Hui let out a scornful snort.
"Nonsense. You've truly lost your mind, haven't you? How do you intend to answer for what comes after, pulling a stunt this deranged?"
"Hot in here? Sweating like that, and it isn't even midsummer yet."
"......"
Naturally, that was what happened when one strained to move and speak with studied nonchalance while maintaining a formation.
It was as dangerous as trying to circulate one's breath work while walking about.
Seo Yugyeom broke into a smirk.
"Your face has gone pale, too. Hand over Jin Seongun, and I'll leave quietly."
"I have no idea why you insist on looking for that insolent waiter here."
Sama Hui held out to the bitter end.
After all, plenty of people were willing to shield that waiter. If he got caught, a thoroughly exhausting affair would surely follow.
Then Seo Yugyeom's expression turned to ice.
"Does this look like a favor?"
"......"
The two men locked eyes for a long moment.
Sama Hui's insides were churning like mad—maintaining the formation, speaking and moving all the while, and simultaneously fending off the bone-deep chill of Seo Yugyeom's killing aura.
That was when it happened.
GRUUUUUMBLE—!
A violent tremor rippled up from beneath their feet.
Everyone—Seo Yugyeom included—looked around in alarm.
At the same moment, the formation masters who had been working the formation alongside Sama Hui turned deathly pale.
The tremor came again.
GRUUGUGUGUMB—!
This time, the bank itself began shaking violently, as though a great earthquake had struck.
The post-peak cultivators and warriors who had been brawling outside came rushing in.
Not one of them bore a scratch, so it seemed even they hadn't managed to fight in earnest.
"Y-young Master!"
The formation masters knew they mustn't call out to the young master, but they cried out anyway. There was nothing else they could do.
Some massive fracture was tearing open in the formation.
Sama Hui, of course, knew that fact better than anyone. He set aside dealing with the intruders and focused on the formation first.
So long as Jin Seongun wasn't discovered, he could talk his way out somehow. They would suspect him to their bones, but without so much as a body to find, what could they possibly do?
But if the formation collapsed here, everything would spiral straight to the worst possible outcome.
There was no chance of that, of course.
This is a formation with no exit in the first place!
Sama Hui shoved his way into one of the formation masters' positions and began intervening in the formation directly—
"It's this bastard, isn't it!"
The moment Seo Yugyeom roared at the sight and tightened his grip on the Heavenly Killing Short Knife.
KWAAAAAAANG—!!!
A fierce crimson flame tore the empty air asunder.
In the same instant, the formation masters collapsed, blood streaming from their noses and mouths.
Sama Hui too slammed a hand against the ground and vomited up blood. With shreds of flesh mixed into it, his internal injuries were clearly severe.
Out of the air split open by the crimson flames, Jin Seongun came strolling out, unhurried. The sword hanging from his right hand dispersed like smoke the moment he stepped into the open.
"Jin Seongun!"
Seo Yugyeom called his name with genuine delight.
Then, from behind Jin Seongun, a masked figure emerged, walking out with a distinctly sheepish air—and every eye in the courtyard converged on them.
Jin Seongun regarded Sama Hui and the formation masters for a moment, then spoke before anyone could open their mouth.
"Let's go. It's all over."
As ever, his tone could not have mattered less.