Just Lend Me a Single Blade
Morning had come to Nakhwajeong.
Guided by one of the manor's attendants, Jin Seongun made his way straight to the dining hall.
Chae Seoryeong, who was in the middle of breakfast, waved at him in a show of welcome.
"……"
Jin Seongun merely gave a single nod, then took a seat some distance away and began his meal.
Chae Seoryeong watched him through narrowed eyes.
What did I do wrong? It must be Mother……
For some reason, she felt as though her mother's grudge had spilled over onto her as well. Of course, the real reason he held a grudge was that she had stolen the signboard of Seongun Inn in the first place.
Jin Seongun focused on the food. Anyone who ran an inn for a living could hardly afford to be careless about a meal.
There weren't many side dishes on the table.
But everything was impeccably clean and refined, with a flavor so uncluttered that even Jin Seongun—spoiled by Seo Yugyeom's cooking—found himself quite satisfied.
When he finished eating and rose from his seat, Chae Seoryeong, who had long since cleared her plate and been waiting, stood up as well.
The two exchanged a brief glance.
Then Chae Seoryeong flashed a sly smile.
"You're heading to the Lord's study, right?"
Jin Seongun nodded.
Chae Seoryeong gestured for him to follow and set off ahead of him. And since Jin Seongun had no idea how Nakhwajeong was laid out anyway, he had little choice but to trail after her.
The study of the Lord of Nakhwajeong.
The moment Jin Seongun entered, Chae Gahwi set a heavy coin pouch down on the table with a solid thump.
Jin Seongun eyed it for a moment before asking.
"What's this?"
"The money Jin So-hyeop earned for us yesterday."
Jin Seongun blinked, and Chae Gahwi went on to explain the peculiar trade arrangement between the forge and the martial sects.
"……"
Jin Seongun stared at the coin pouch with distaste.
Which meant, in a word, that this was money earned by thieving. He had spent his whole life working as a waiter, earning every coin honestly, so the whole thing left a strange taste in his mouth.
Above all, taking that money would have made him feel like a genuine thief.
"Keep the money."
"Then throw it away."
"……"
Jin Seongun gave her a look of sheer disbelief.
Before long, Chae Gahwi let out a small, dry laugh.
"It was money we were bound to reclaim eventually, one way or another. Granted, it would have been in the very distant future."
She had known for some time that the Zhongnan Sect no longer used the swords they were sent. Naturally, that peculiar trading arrangement came with a deadline attached.
The sect was required to return either the scrap iron or its equivalent value to the forge within the allotted time.
But since that deadline was generally set at ten years or more, it was, for all practical purposes, a formality.
"So let me change my words. Consider this a token of my gratitude—you saved Nakhwajeong's sword, and this is my repayment."
Chae Gahwi had never been comfortable sending swords off to the Zhongnan Sect in the first place. She had no desire to leave her clan's masterworks languishing in the hands of people who treated them with such disregard.
Yet the reason she could not simply void the arrangement was simple. It was the same reason the Zhongnan Sect kept theirs: face.
If a later generation were the first to open its mouth and break a pact their ancestors had made, their standing in the orthodox world of wulin would be gravely damaged.
And so both the Zhongnan Sect and Nakhwajeong had been trapped in an uncomfortable transaction, each secretly disliking the other, with no way out.
But circumstances had changed.
Pressed relentlessly by Chae Gahwi's probing, the sect had finally confessed that the swords had vanished.
"Thanks to that, I was able to end the arrangement going forward, with their own wrongdoing as my justification."
"I see, well……"
Jin Seongun remained indifferent. The truth was, he had little interest in their dealings.
"Please, speak comfortably."
Jin Seongun said.
He and Chae Seoryeong already spoke informally to each other, so it felt odd for the girl's mother to be using honorifics with him. But neither could he very well ask a woman his own mother's age to keep speaking down to him when her daughter had to speak politely going forward.
It was the sort of remark that only a man consumed by authority—a Sama Hui, say—could make without a second thought.
Chae Gahwi nodded at once.
"Very well."
"……"
The discomfort, as it happened, ran both ways.
Jin Seongun looked at her squarely.
His eyes made it plain: get on with it—tell me the terms of the bet.
Chae Gahwi deliberated for a moment.
By now she had nearly brought herself to believe that this man was the Divine Thief's successor. Stealing more than sixty swords from the armory at the heart of the Zhongnan Sect was something that simply could not be explained by anyone else.
Moreover, he knew the Divine Thief's family name, and he knew of the bet that only the Divine Thief and Nakhwajeong shared.
Any one of those alone would have been strong evidence—yet all three existed at once.
But there was one thing.
Once she assumed Jin Seongun really was the Divine Thief's successor, she found herself hesitating precisely because of it.
You said you spared Seoryeong's life.
She had heard a far more detailed account the previous night of what had happened in Yichang.
The truth was, the Divine Thief's successor could have killed Chae Seoryeong or maimed her badly a hundred times over. That had been true even on the open battlefield, and all the more so inside the formation.
But he hadn't.
As Chae Gahwi saw it, he had handed Chae Seoryeong over to the Martial Alliance in the safest possible manner, in the best way he could.
That meant his character was not a wicked one.
Furthermore, despite the provocations hurled at him all evening, he had remained—if anything, a touch dry and unflappable—never once losing his temper or demanding answers.
That kind of composure at his age is rare indeed.
Chae Gahwi, after all, ran a clan of her own.
She prided herself on at least one thing: an eye for reading people. And through that eye, Jin Seongun looked to be a rather fine young man indeed.
"And you claim to know nothing of the bet's contents?"
"That's right."
"It's the kind of thing that could cost you your life."
That was the crux of Chae Gahwi's dilemma.
Sending this promising young man—and her own daughter, Chae Seoryeong—into that dangerous Cheonghae Iron Pavilion, all under the banner of a bet and the clan's revival.
"If it troubles you, then just tell me what I need to bring back. I'll go alone."
At his words, Chae Gahwi let out a long breath.
After a moment's deliberation, she said this to Jin Seongun:
"Do you know how the Divine Thief died?"
"……Yes, I do."
He had heard it from the Divine Thief himself, after all.
Chae Gahwi nodded and continued.
"He died because of the bet he made with my mother."
Privately, Jin Seongun was startled to learn that Chae Ok-hyeon—the woman who had wagered against the Divine Thief—belonged to the generation directly above.
Then Chae Gahwi's story went on.
"The moment my mother proposed that bet to the Divine Thief, she regretted it and went straight to find him."
"But she was too late."
"You're right. He had already set out, and by the time my mother hurried to the Cheonghae Iron Pavilion, she was—quite literally—too late."
What Chae Gahwi was saying was clear enough.
By now even Jin Seongun had a fair idea of where she was heading.
"My mother spent her whole life regretting it."
"So you mean you can't allow me, his successor, to suffer the same fate."
"……To speak honestly, yes."
"I thought that was what the promise was."
Steal the swords back from the Zhongnan Sect, and that would prove him the Divine Thief's successor.
"That was a test to prove you were the Divine Thief's heir. It was never meant to imply that we were obligated to accept the bet."
"Then why ask me to prove it at all, if you weren't going to honor the wager?"
"Because you already know about the bet. What passed between the Cheonghae Iron Pavilion and Nakhwajeong is the most shameful chapter of our history, and if it ever came to light, Nakhwajeong could well find itself branded an enemy of the entire orthodox world. If you were a complete outsider who had learned that secret through some means or other……"
She let the sentence trail off.
Even so, Jin Seongun could infer the rest.
Nakhwajeong would have tried to kill him by any means necessary. Quite apart from whether they could have managed it, a secret of that magnitude absolutely had to be kept.
But if Jin Seongun were the Divine Thief's successor, everything changed. The Divine Thief had been a direct party to that bet.
"What exactly is this bet?"
By this point, he had no choice but to ask again.
She deliberated for a while, then lowered her voice. Even though a silencing barrier normally covered the Lord's study, she was being more careful still.
"The Demonic Cult. They're entangled in this."
Jin Seongun's brow twitched.
Even Jin Seongun, who had never cared a whit for the history of wulin, knew the name of the Demonic Cult—the Heavenly Demon Cult—all too well.
Everyone born and raised in the Central Plains learned, over the course of their lives, to fear and loathe the Demonic Cult.
Such was the world's hatred for it—its contempt, and at the same time, its terror.
"Wait—the Demonic Cult? Why on earth……"
Jin Seongun spoke as though dumbfounded, then glanced over at Chae Seoryeong. She didn't look the least bit surprised—apparently she had already known.
Presently, Jin Seongun looked in turn at Chae Seoryeong and Chae Gahwi, at their crimson hair.
It might have been mere prejudice, but in this particular moment it was a fairly reasonable question.
"Are you of Demonic Cult descent?"
"……Something like that."
Chae Gahwi offered no further explanation.
But that alone was enough for Jin Seongun to infer that Demonic Cult blood ran in their veins.
Make no mistake—this was no small matter.
Nakhwajeong was a clan that did its business with the Central Plains, and with the martial world above all.
The forces of the orthodox sects, the Martial Alliance chief among them, would either hide themselves or draw their blades at the mere mention of the Demonic Cult.
The Cult was a blind, unquestioned enemy.
To become entangled with them meant, without exception, the extermination of one's entire sect—and even if it had all been a mistake, proving that innocence meant years of bitter suffering.
And that was only natural.
Every time the Heavenly Demon Cult had stirred throughout history, the whole of the Central Plains had run red with blood. And that very blood belonged to the ancestors of today's Martial Alliance, the Nine Sects and One School, and the Five Great Clans.
The Martial Alliance had been founded in the first place to hold back the Demonic Cult, and its most fundamental reason for enduring to this day was still to wipe the Cult from the face of the world.
Such was the world they lived in.
And if it ever came to light that Demonic Cult blood flowed in their veins, what would follow was obvious.
The crimson hair that everyone had praised as mysterious, as beautiful, would become the object of fury and loathing.
Every soul in Nakhwajeong would die.
Even if the orthodox world performed a miracle and showed mercy, the women with red hair—every last one of them—would be put to death.
Jin Seongun looked back and forth between Chae Gahwi and Chae Seoryeong once more.
A shadow had fallen over the face of Chae Gahwi, ever so proud. Chae Seoryeong's face went without saying—she had bowed her head, terrified of finding disgust in the eyes of the man looking at her.
And so her crimson hair showed all the more vividly.
A heavy silence hung in the air for a long while.
Chae Gahwi assumed Jin Seongun would wash his hands of the whole affair.
The name of the Heavenly Demon Cult itself had been invoked—of course he would.
"You're young. And you don't seem like a bad man, from what I can see. Above all, you are the benefactor who saved Seoryeong's life. How could I ask my daughter's savior to involve himself in something so filthy and dangerous?"
Chae Gahwi said it in a gentle tone—the tone of a woman confident that, after all this explanation, he was sure to understand.
And indeed, to her eyes, Jin Seongun's expression looked extremely grave.
He was grave.
With a look of utmost solemnity, Jin Seongun summoned the image of the Divine Thief's face.
So that's why he asked for the armor……
The moment he returned home, he was absolutely going to demand an accounting from his master. How could the man not breathe a word of warning when the Demonic Cult was entangled in all this?
Truly, it defied belief.
And it was for precisely that reason that Jin Seongun's resolve burned all the hotter. Before long, he spoke.
"Is the Cheonghae Iron Pavilion perhaps part of the Demonic Cult as well?"
"……It is. Though proving it will be far from easy. We're the only ones who know the truth, and to expose them we would first have to reveal that Nakhwajeong itself has ties to the Cult."
Jin Seongun's face lit up.
Even in the present day, the Demonic Cult caused incidents from time to time—and they were invariably cruel, depraved acts of villainy.
Each time, the orthodox world rose up to punish them, but the Cult simply burrowed deeper into every corner of the Central Plains and carried on its wickedness without end.
Jin Seongun's expression was so bright, so unmistakably relieved, that Chae Gahwi and Chae Seoryeong both began to wonder if they'd heard him right.
At that moment, Jin Seongun rose from his seat and said:
"Then just lend me a single blade."
Thinking, perhaps, that things might turn out to be remarkably simple after all.