The Vault of the Divine Thief
Falling Fire Manor.
Lishan, Shaanxi Province.
Before visiting Nakhwajeong, Jin Seongun decided to stop by Shin Tu's secret vault first.
The vault lay on Lishan, a modest mountain right beside Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi.
As he scaled the mountain in a single burst of lightness skill, he spotted near the midpoint the shrine of Guan Yu that Shin Tu had mentioned.
Jin Seongun paused before it for a while, taking in the figure of Guan Yu firmly gripping his Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
It seemed the statue had stood guard over this spot for hundreds of years; the stone was worn here and there, yet the eyes of Guan Yu alone had lost not a trace of their ferocious valor.
"He looks like my masters."
The Martial Gods of Seongun Inn were the same. Their names had already passed into history, and yet they still existed, unmistakably, to this day.
Jin Seongun gave a small bow to the statue, which seemed to glare at him in wariness.
"Pardon the intrusion."
He then seized the small handle protruding from the shrine floor and pulled with all his strength.
Gu-gu-gu-gung—!
The floor lifted up like a door, shedding a cascade of rubble, and revealed a staircase just wide enough for two people to squeeze through.
It was so dark below that it was impossible to gauge how deep the passage might run.
Jin Seongun descended the stairs slowly.
What kind of treasure would a thief of Shin Tu's caliber keep in his vault?
The odds that it was some trivial trinket, like Chae Seoryeong's keepsakes, were vanishingly slim. If that were the case, his master would hardly have bothered telling him to stop by and use what was there.
He mused over such thoughts as the staircase stretched on and on, until even the last thread of light bleeding in from outside had faded away entirely.
It was darkness as deep and total as black ink.
"A door, is it?"
At the end of the stairs stood a dead-end wall. Running his hand over it carefully, he judged it to be made of iron.
Jin Seongun channeled his inner energy and pushed against the mass of metal.
Gu-gu-gung—!
The iron slab gave way, grinding back with a heavy groan. It was even heavier than the boundary marker he had once made off with, which meant anyone of low martial attainment likely couldn't have opened this door at all.
When the door parted, a vast cavern yawned open before him.
Fwoosh!
He kindled the True Samadhi Fire and lit a torch hanging from one wall.
Strangely enough, the moment one torch flared to life, every torch on the walls brightened in answer.
"Ooh…"
So Shin Tu's vault truly did hold something mystical about it.
Lost in that thought, he took a moment to survey the cavern. It was far more spacious than he had expected—stuff it full of people, and it could easily hold a hundred or more.
"…"
It seemed, in fact, that quite a few people had made it this far. Faded skeletons lay scattered here and there.
Well, it was Shin Tu's vault.
Tomb raiders would have slavered at the thought of it. No—more than raiders, even the accomplished masters of the murim would have turned grave robber themselves to get at this place.
On one wall of the cavern stood a door. On either side of it, at a fairly wide interval, were two indentations—shaped, oddly enough, like human palms.
"Hmm."
Jin Seongun stood quietly, studying the door and the indentations. Between the two holes and the door itself was carved a complicated maze-like groove.
The intended use seemed clear enough.
Without a moment's hesitation, Jin Seongun walked straight up to one of the holes and poured his energy into it.
And to his astonishment, the energy ignited into light and raced along the maze toward the door.
Jin Seongun watched, dumbfounded—
KWAAAAAAANG—!
An earth-shaking explosion erupted, and a shockwave of energy burst forth.
Caught up in the unforeseen blast, Jin Seongun was sent tumbling through the air for a good long while.
"…"
It was absurd. Really—his master had told him where the vault was but not how to open it?
The principle behind the explosion was fascinating in its own right. It didn't rely on anything like gunpowder; rather, once energy passed through the hole and reached the door, the door itself detonated that energy.
The force of the blast was such that Jin Seongun had been forced to raise his Body-Protecting Astral Qi in haste just to shield his whole body.
No wonder there were skeletons scattered about the cavern. This wasn't merely a safeguard for treasure—it was a deliberate scheme to punish every last grave robber who set foot inside.
Letting out a low sigh, Jin Seongun soon approached the door once more. The explosion had swept the dust from its surface, leaving dense rows of carved characters exposed.
Reading them over, he realized they had not been left by Shin Tu.
'One must pour energy into the two holes at the same time.'
'Even two different people pouring simultaneously—it still explodes.'
'Even two martial artists of the same school, trained in the same mental cultivation method—it explodes.'
'Song Yiyeon was here. Left again.'
'You THIEVING BASTARD. Can this thing even be opened at all? And YOU can open it, Shin Tu?'
'May Heaven strike you down!'
Most of the carvings were the guesses left behind by grave robbers at the cost of their precious lives, with the occasional curse or crude insult mixed in.
What they all shared was a curious undercurrent of fury in the brushwork. Every one of them, it seemed, had lost companions while trying to solve this puzzle.
"That's what you get for coveting another man's vault…"
No—granted, the things inside had all been stolen in the first place.
With that thought, Jin Seongun studied the two holes again for a moment.
In any case, the fact that there were two holes meant something had to be done simultaneously. And yet pouring in the same energy caused an explosion. Different energies would obviously detonate it as well.
After a stretch of pondering, Jin Seongun arrived at one decisive clue.
"The master of this vault is my master, after all…"
With a testing air, he approached one of the holes. He had two options: Blood Demon Qi, or Yeowol-gi.
He paused to imagine it—pouring in Blood Demon Qi and having the whole thing blow up in his face.
"…Maybe not that one."
Even Jin Seongun felt a flicker of fear at that.
Soon he raised Yeowol-gi and laid his hand over the hole. If the puzzle had been as simple as channeling the same energy into both openings, warriors who trained in the same mental method would have swarmed here long ago and emptied the place.
But to put it coldly, their energies were never the same. Even when cultivating identical methods, the innate congenital qi each person was born with—and the differences in temperament—produced subtle variations. In other words, if the two holes were to receive energy that was perfectly identical, a single person had to accomplish both at once.
And there was only one way in all the world to do that.
The instant Jin Seongun raised his energy, he executed Body-Shifting Transposition and moved to the opposite hole.
Two streams of energy poured into the holes. In the next breath, pure white energy traced the path of the carved maze and reached the door—both streams arriving at precisely the same moment.
Clunk—!
The door opened.
It was a door that only Shin Tu—or one who had inherited Shin Tu's peerless arts—could ever have opened.
The small chamber inside was surprisingly plain. There were no dazzling gold ingots, no night-luminous pearls or precious gems. Only a worn wooden chest resting atop a rough-hewn table—nothing more. That, alone, was the reason this vault existed.
Jin Seongun carefully opened the chest. Beneath a white cloth lay an ink-black iron armor, nestled neatly within.
For some reason, an ominous feeling crept over him. Of all things, the treasure his master had promised would be of help—a suit of armor…
Jin Seongun lifted the iron armor out. It was enormous, large enough to drape over the stone statue of Guan Yu outside. And yet it weighed nothing at all, as though strung together from feathers—an uncanny sensation.
He stripped off his upper garments and donned the armor against his bare skin.
Clunk—!
The instant he did, the iron armor wrapped itself softly around his body and cinched tight. It fit him perfectly, as though it were one with his very skin. What was more, it was so light and supple that he felt as if he were wearing nothing at all.
When he glanced at his waist, red characters inscribed there read Yonggap—Dragon Armor.
Jin Seongun rapped his fist lightly against the Dragon Armor. It gave a dull, resonant tung-tung, yet it felt remarkably solid, and no shock reached his skin at all.
He then gathered striking force into his hand and slammed it savagely into his own side.
BANG—!
A small explosion went off. Even so, the Dragon Armor didn't so much as crack—it didn't even gain the tiniest scratch.
Soon Jin Seongun sheathed his hand in the Blood Demon Palm.
"…"
That, he decided, was not going to happen.
Having recalled the Blood Demon Qi, Jin Seongun gave a single nod and stepped back outside.
He had no idea who the Dragon Armor's original owner might have been, but lending out such a fine piece was something to be grateful for regardless.
A truly thief-like way of thinking, that. Though Jin Seongun himself never noticed it.
Shaanxi Province, Xi'an.
True to its name—a city of peace—there stood within it a grand manor that exuded a quiet, unhurried air.
Clang, clang—!
From the break of dawn until the small hours before midnight, the ringing of hammer against iron echoed ceaselessly from the manor.
"Wasn't that a bit too blunt of a rejection, though? We did fight through that formation together, after all."
Chae Seoryeong, hammering away before a roaring blaze, suddenly recalled Jin Seongun's refusal and grumbled under her breath.
Her appearance now was utterly different from the day she had called on Seongun Inn. Her face was smeared black with charcoal from cheek to brow, and her sleeves were rolled up with practiced efficiency. Nothing remained of the noble young lady of a great house—she was every inch a blacksmith.
With the crimson eyes of Nakhwa Jeomjeong, she read the flow of energy as she slowly, patiently hammered the heated iron.
How much time had passed like that?
"Oh…"
She held up the thin blade of iron she had finished forging, turning it this way and that, and breathed out a low sigh of admiration.
Nakhwajeong had lost its former glory. That was an undeniable fact. Its golden age—when it had forged the famed blades of every great house under heaven—had long since faded completely.
And yet Nakhwajeong had endured, carrying its legacy onward. Not as a swordsmith house, but as makers of needles: smiths who used the power of Nakhwa Jeomjeong to craft thin, slender needles of exquisite precision.
Every medical clinic in the realm coveted Nakhwajeong's needles. Chief Strategist Sama Baek in particular, yielding wholesale to the demands of the physicians, routinely purchased a great portion of everything Nakhwajeong produced.
She gazed at the needle she had just finished for a moment, then flicked her hand through the air.
Swish—!
The slender needle shot straight for the wall, then lost its force and clattered to the ground.
Chae Seoryeong clicked her tongue.
"How on earth do the Tang Family people do it?"
Part of the needles Nakhwajeong produced flowed into the hands of the Sichuan Tang Family. She had watched them hurl needles and daggers some time ago—if she learned that art herself, wouldn't it prove a great boon to her thieving in the future?
Lost in such musings, Chae Seoryeong soon left the forge. Her destination was the quiet training ground tucked away in a corner of the manor.
After a quick glance around, she drew a handful of slender needles from her pouch.
Tss-rk—!
She scattered the sharp needles freely across the training ground floor. With hundreds of them strewn about, they glittered like moonlight shimmering on rippling water.
Needles, of course, that the trainees had forged sloppily and deemed unfit for sale.
Chae Seoryeong then sprinted barefoot across them. Unless every single step was placed with extreme care, the soles of her feet would run red with blood in no time.
She was at the peak of her concentration when—
"Aack!"
A sharp sting shot through her sole. Chae Seoryeong grimaced and plucked the needle from her foot.
Her focus had broken for an instant. It hadn't happened in nearly a year.
"…How does he do it?"
The truth was, no matter how hard she tried to shake it off, Jin Seongun kept resurfacing in her thoughts.
It made her blood boil. She had been certain that no martial artist her age could match her speed.
But she had come to see that belief for what it was—arrogance. Jin Seongun was far faster than she was. Far stealthier. And on top of it all, stronger, too.
Chae Seoryeong recalled the single stroke Jin Seongun had unleashed within the formation. It had been a ferocious power, as though an entire sword had swallowed the sun in the sky whole.
Having witnessed it directly through her Nakhwa Jeomjeong made it all the more staggering.
"No conscience at all, that man."
She shook her head slowly. It was true that Jin Seongun's firm refusal had stung her pride. But thinking about it now, it had perhaps been for the best.
He had been caught in the Sama Clan reprobate's formation in the first place because of her thieving. She could hardly ask someone like that to risk danger for her sake again. There wasn't even time for it.
It was only that a duty passed down through generations was pressing down on her shoulders far too heavily—that was all.
She rationalized it to herself that way, and yet the truth remained: she felt pathetic.
Just then, Sibi came tiptoeing cautiously toward the training ground.
"Stop right there!"
Chae Seoryeong hastily halted her. The training ground was carpeted with slender needles, after all—and since this ground was reserved for her use alone, she had been free to scatter them to her heart's content.
Startled, Sibi bowed her head slightly and spoke.
"Miss, a guest has come to see you?"
"A guest? Is it Jinhee unnie?"
"No, it's a man, and…"
Sibi went on, her face flushing oddly pink.
"He was incredibly handsome?"
"Huh?"
Chae Seoryeong's face went blank. She didn't have a single friend who was a handsome man—she didn't have a single male friend, period.
After a moment of deep thought, her eyes suddenly flew wide open.
"Ah—don't tell me…"
Without warning, Chae Seoryeong shot off in a burst of lightness skill, streaking for the main gate.
Just as she had guessed.
Standing before the main gate with an awkward, sheepish expression was none other than Jin Seongun.
"What do you want?! Why are you here?"
Chae Seoryeong shouted, unable to hide her gladness—then immediately scowled.
Come to think of it, she had rushed out without washing off a whole day's sweat and charcoal. And she was barefoot, of all things. Her face burned with shame.
The maids passing through the manor grounds kept stealing glances at the two of them with the most peculiar expressions. No man had ever once come looking for Chae Seoryeong before.
And he was tall and handsome, no less. As for his expression—so grave and resolute it looked as though he were about to blurt out a confession on the spot.
The air around the maids practically crackled with anticipation, and even Chae Seoryeong found her cheeks coloring faintly.
Then Jin Seongun spoke, in a tone of the utmost gravity.
"I have come to settle a contest with Nakhwajeong."
In that instant, Chae Seoryeong—and every maid milling about—froze solid where they stood.