The Ghost-Cry Sword
Cheonghae Iron Pavilion.
In a remote stretch of mountains where no human presence stirred, the sorrowful wail of a young child echoed through the air — so piercing it raised the hair on one's arms.
"This is……"
Shock rippled across Chae Seoryeong's face. As the daughter of a smithy herself, she could say with absolute certainty that this sword cry was deeply, fundamentally wrong.
Stories she had heard at the Kunlun Sect surfaced in her mind. Children had been disappearing.
"No... that can't be right?"
Chae Seoryeong asked, as if needing to confirm it aloud.
But Jin Seongun gave no answer. He poured himself entirely into channeling Yeowol-gi into the blade. He couldn't have explained why, yet an instinct told him this was what he had to do right now.
The wailing stretched on and on.
And the more Yeowol-gi he poured in — the more that pure white, merciful energy coiled around the sword like a hand soothing a blade — the louder and more heartbroken the cry became.
So it went, for who knew how long.
Little by little, the crying began to die down.
And then, something eerie happened.
Ssssshhhh—
A pale bluish-white mist rose from the sword.
The shimmering vapor wavered vividly for a moment, then began drifting slowly up toward the sky.
As it rose, the wailing faded further.
By the time the crying had stopped completely, Jin Seongun withdrew his Yeowol-gi. The bluish-white haze continued climbing into the heavens until at last it vanished beyond the edge of sight.
For a while, Jin Seongun and Chae Seoryeong simply stared up at the sky with dazed expressions.
"……"
Before long, their eyes met.
It seemed they were thinking much the same thing.
Cheonghae Iron Pavilion is doing something unnatural to its swords.
"But how come nobody noticed? You're not the only martial artist in the world capable of projecting a sword cry."
Chae Seoryeong's question was a fair one.
It was commonly held that masters who reached the Peak Realm could channel their qi into a blade and project a sword cry from it.
The state known as the Unity of Sword and Spirit — Shingeom-habil.
Jin Seongun mulled over the reason for a moment before answering.
"I'd wager it's because of the martial art I've learned."
Daji's Yeowol Mind Art.
An energy that gently soothes all things in creation. It seemed that his Yeowol-gi had calmed something dwelling within the sword and sent it up to the heavens.
It would surely be connected to the children who had vanished.
And it was no trick of the imagination — that sword cry had unmistakably been a child's weeping.
"Lady Chae."
"Yeah."
Chae Seoryeong's mood darkened visibly. Jin Seongun continued.
"Can a sword ever carry the sound of a person crying?"
Jin Seongun knew little about the murim. Naturally, that meant he knew little about blades and other weapons either.
But Chae Seoryeong was different. She was a woman born and raised in a smithy, after all.
She thought hard for a moment, then answered with a face gone somewhat pale.
"There is something called a Ghost-Cry Sword... Gwigum-geom."
"The weeping of a ghost?"
Chae Seoryeong nodded. As far as she knew, the Ghost-Cry Sword was the only blade said to produce anything resembling a human voice.
"Honestly, I'm not even sure it actually exists. The idea is that you forge a human soul into the molten steel. Then the soul, weighed down by its grudges, becomes trapped inside the sword."
"……Why would anyone make such a thing?"
"I don't know why. Could be for religious reasons, or maybe they believe a blade holding a human soul grows stronger. But I'll say it again — I'm not even sure a real Ghost-Cry Sword exists. For that matter, I'm not sure ghosts exist at all."
"Ghosts do exist."
Jin Seongun declared flatly.
Chae Seoryeong's eyes went round. He looked like the last man alive who would believe in ghosts.
"You've actually seen one?"
Jin Seongun nodded.
Of course he had. Quite often, in fact.
After all, the only reason he had come this far in the first place was a request from that ghostly master of his.
"Either way, we need to go to Cheonghae Iron Pavilion and see for ourselves. To find out just what in the world is happening there. This is something we must do, apart from any wager with Nakhwajeong."
Chae Seoryeong nodded in agreement.
Children were disappearing. A sword from Cheonghae Iron Pavilion had carried the sound of a child weeping.
Too many pieces failed to add up for it all to be dismissed as coincidence.
"Tonight I'll go alone."
Jin Seongun said it like a pronouncement. Chae Seoryeong's eyes went wide.
"I'm coming with you."
"I only mean to take a quick look. I'll scope out roughly what's going on and come back."
"Which is exactly why we're going together."
A staring contest broke out between the two of them.
Both were stubborn by nature, and neither would be the first to look away.
So it went, for who knew how long.
Tears began to well up in Chae Seoryeong's reddening eyes.
"Ah."
She looked away first.
Even so, she refused to give up.
"Then why did you even let me come? And why did you drill me in lightness footwork on the way here? And what formation did you think might be waiting inside Cheonghae Iron Pavilion?"
Her eyes were brimming with worry. This wasn't mere stubbornness.
It was a formation that had even caught the Divine Thief off guard — one that lay within Cheonghae Iron Pavilion. She, who could read the energy of formations, simply had to be there.
Chae Seoryeong added,
"Even the Sima Clan fell into a formation, remember."
"……"
No worthy rebuttal came to mind.
In the end, Jin Seongun let out a sigh and spoke.
"Then let's make one promise."
"Name it. I'll take two."
"……We go together. But the moment danger arises, you run without question. And I will be the one to make that call."
In other words: if Jin Seongun said run, she was to run — no argument, no stubbornness, no hesitation.
Just as Chae Seoryeong opened her mouth to protest,
"If I were alone, a situation that wouldn't be dangerous could become dangerous because of you."
"……"
Chae Seoryeong's expression turned grave.
What Jin Seongun was saying was perfectly clear.
Don't become a burden.
And it was an undeniable truth. If she were taken hostage or thrown into peril, Jin Seongun would be forced to spend attention he would never otherwise have needed to spend.
"Fine. Understood."
"I promised your lord father I'd see you home safe. Keeping up with thieving is trouble enough — don't go making a liar out of me too."
Jin Seongun said with a straight face.
Chae Seoryeong's eyes flew open in astonishment.
"Wait — I wasn't a thief to begin with?"
"……A fortune-teller, were you not."
"Exactly! So which one's your day job — the thieving or the fortune-telling?"
Jin Seongun sighed.
The only thought in his head was that once this business was over, he needed to start living an honest life.
A night of torrential rain.
Two masked figures stood atop the outer wall of Cheonghae Iron Pavilion.
Clang! Clang—!
Even at this dead hour, the sound of hammering rose ceaselessly from within the pavilion. The sharp, heavy ring of iron striking iron wove through the drumming rain, lending the night a strangely mournful air.
The masked figures exchanged a glance.
Nod.
No more words were needed. In the next breath, Jin Seongun and Chae Seoryeong leapt in unison.
.
.
.
Cheonghae Iron Pavilion was colossal. It looked to be a good five times the size of Nakhwajeong.
Jin Seongun and Chae Seoryeong moved carefully from rooftop to rooftop.
— Over there!
Chae Seoryeong sent her voice directly into Jin Seongun's mind, pointing to the next roof. Her crimson-tinted eyes were reading the formations laid across the entirety of Cheonghae Iron Pavilion, one by one.
There was no reason to rush. A formation was never meant to be burst through at speed — the way through was to place each step precisely on the living gates and advance slowly, calmly.
And so the two of them penetrated deeper and deeper into the pavilion's grounds.
Suddenly, Jin Seongun raised a hand.
Chae Seoryeong froze mid-step. Jin Seongun poked his head out and peered down beneath the eaves.
Two armed men, swords at their waists, were pacing back and forth as if patrolling the pavilion.
The moment Jin Seongun laid eyes on them, he knew.
'Demon Men. Mabin.'
It was his first time seeing warriors of the Heavenly Demon Cult. Even so, the aura radiating from them was so singular that there could be no mistake.
They were nothing like the warriors of the Evil factions. Something far more sinister and unsettling clung to them — if he had to put it into words, it felt like blood mixed with oil, greasy and clinging.
'It resembles Master Blood Demon's energy.'
Not identical, no. But he was certain there was a connection.
As they waited atop the roof, conversation drifted up from below.
"How many are left?"
"Four more before the month's end, they say."
"See it done with room to spare, if you can."
"As you command."
The two men then parted ways. Jin Seongun silently trailed the one who appeared to be the superior.
— Over there!
Chae Seoryeong's transmitted voice reached him. Truly, with her abilities at their disposal, they could move without stirring any needless commotion.
Step by careful step across the living gates, they followed the man. Before long, he entered a certain hall.
Jin Seongun pointed to that hall's roof, and Chae Seoryeong nodded — it's clear.
Jin Seongun climbed straight up, then sharpened his senses to their utmost.
Faint, but audible: voices. The middle-aged warrior who had just gone inside, and an old man, deep in conversation.
"I'll deliver four more within a fortnight."
"Heh heh. Thanks to you, Great Master, we'll meet this month's quota without a hitch."
"What of the matter I spoke of before?"
"Ah — the Kunlun Sect's sword."
A flicker of interest crossed Jin Seongun's eyes. The old man went on.
"Nothing but a request to lengthen it by a single measure from before. Their third-generation disciples are getting on in years, most likely. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with their martial arts."
"I see."
"And in truth, the Kunlun Sect isn't all that attached to a sword's shape. You know that as well as I do. But the Namgung Clan is another matter. Look at this."
A rustle of paper. The sound of steel brushing against cloth.
Jin Seongun strained his hearing even further, a faint frustration building in him.
Then the voices resumed.
"The Namgung Clan altered their swords. It appears they've modified their martial techniques somewhat. The blade's weight has been reduced, if only slightly. But given that its form hasn't changed……"
"So they mean to raise a fighting force of women. Fitting, since their young clan head is a woman herself."
"Precisely. My thoughts exactly."
From there, the two men's talk turned to the Martial Alliance, the Nine Sects and Five Noble Clans, and the various other orthodox powers of the murim.
After listening for some time, Jin Seongun grasped their purpose.
'The whole of Cheonghae Iron Pavilion is a tentacle of the Demonic Cult.'
The cult supplied the pavilion with children. Just what those children were being used for, he could not yet say for certain.
It would have been bad enough if they were simply worked like slaves. But recalling the sword cry he had heard earlier, a far darker instinct stirred in him — that something far worse was underway.
In return, the pavilion fed the cult information about the orthodox murim.
Martial arts advance without cease. Each sect and clan, as their arts evolve, commissions new blades to match. And the pavilion passes those changes along to the Demonic Cult.
Their aim was obvious: to advance in step with the orthodox world's growing arts, preparing for the day the two sides would clash. Just as the Martial Alliance regarded the Heavenly Demon Cult as its foremost enemy, the cult regarded the orthodox murim in precisely the same light.
And the cult's method was rather shrewd.
Every sect guarded the subtleties and evolutions of its own martial arts like a fortress under lock and key — yet those very truths were inevitably reflected in the blades they wielded.
Powers like the Five Noble Clans and the Nine Sects, whose supreme masters handled the finest, most delicate intricacies of technique, adjusted their weapons in infinitesimal ways as their arts developed — weight, length, breadth, temper, degree of flex.
Adjustments so fine and subtle that no naked eye could ever detect them. Only the ones who made the request, and the smiths who forged the blades, could ever know.
Jin Seongun resolved to send a letter to Yichang with this intelligence. Once he did, Oh Jeong-san or someone equally capable would see it passed along to the orthodox murim through the proper channels.
That was when it happened.
Jin Seongun's and Chae Seoryeong's heads snapped around at the same instant.
"AAAAAGH!!"
A scream.
A child's scream.
Jin Seongun and Chae Seoryeong shot forward in the same breath.