Well, Well. Haven't Seen This One Before.
Soyul, freshly reminded that not one word of what her old master had told her was wrong, suddenly found herself troubled by something else entirely.
So does living among these orthodox faction bastards mean I have to talk like that? Spewing goosebump-inducing lines like those?
The mere thought was horrifying, but there was no way around it. The orthodox sects were the best place to hide from the Demonic Cult's eyes, and the one place its hands could not reach. No one in the cult would ever imagine that someone born and raised among them had gone over to the orthodox faction rather than some other unorthodox sect.
Besides, this orthodox bastard had seen through her Demonic Cult origins at a single glance, which meant that if she had to attach herself to anyone, it had to be someone on the orthodox side.
Because he'll be watching me too, won't he?
Having roughly sorted out her thoughts, Soyul flashed Ja-un a grin.
"Eh, I don't know about all that. Then how about buying me one of those red date cakes you were about to toss?"
"Th... toss... Ahem. Very well. I daresay you'll find it tasty."
Cho Ja-un paid out a little coin and returned with the cake, and Soyul took it carefully, bit into it, and went wide-eyed with shock.
"What? Why is this so good?"
Had these orthodox bastards been hoarding food this delicious all to themselves? Then why had she spent all those years up on the mountain chewing weeds and hunting wild beasts? A wave of injustice washed over her.
As Soyul muttered something under her breath, Cho Ja-un noticed the uncomfortable stares converging on them and glanced surreptitiously around. It was hardly surprising. However quiet this backwater village might be, a woman strutting through the streets in broad daylight in a courtesan's outfit that left little to the imagination was bound to draw glances mixing curiosity with contempt.
The only reason no one dared mutter anything was that she was walking beside Cho Ja-un, a martial artist of imposing bearing at a glance. Without him, she would already have endured countless lecherous stares and ugly remarks like "Tsk, tsk, shameless" or "A young thing dressed like that, flaunting herself wherever she pleases."
Cho Ja-un heaved a deep sigh.
"Perhaps we should start by getting you some proper clothes?"
At that, Soyul looked down at the fluttering courtesan's dress she wore—a "gift" from the bandits, who had sworn it was the height of fashion these days—while still chewing her red date cake.
"Huh? Why? What's wrong with it? They said it was fashionable. Isn't it?"
Cho Ja-un wanted to ask, Do I really look pathetic enough to be expected to keep up with courtesan fashion trends? but held his tongue. As he had resolved mere moments ago, he had no wish to hurt the feelings of his precious new friend, so he answered quietly instead.
"Ah, of course it suits you. But it is not the sort of dress for this place. Look around you."
"Oh..."
Just as he said, most of the merchants running their stalls and the busy residents of Cheongseok County went about in light, practical garb or modest robes—'ordinary, normal' clothes.
Soyul muttered under her breath.
"Tch. Country bumpkins who wouldn't know fashion if it bit them."
"What was that?"
Cho Ja-un tilted his head, but Soyul just shook hers and played innocent. Then again, in a village where everyone had three eyes, the two-eyed one was the freak.
"Nothing. Let's go buy clothes, then."
"I believe it's this way."
"Wait just a moment before that—"
With those words she vanished in a blur, and when she returned a moment later, she was holding one more skewer of red date cakes. Cho Ja-un's brow furrowed at the sight.
"What? Did you steal that?"
"What do you take me for? I paid for it."
"Ahem. If you return so quickly that people jump to conclusions, Miss Kang, that is hardly my fault."
"Who's jumping to anything? Here, take one, Ja-un. I can't be the only one eating something this good."
"I must decline. I told you, I don't care for sweet things—mmph!"
"Come on! Let's go! Clothes!"
Soyul stuffed the cake into the protesting Ja-un's mouth and marched boldly ahead, only to turn back at the sigh and the words that drifted from behind her.
"Not that way. Over here, please."
"Ah..."
"Oh, it's bigger than I expected. For a mere cloth shop."
"...? You call this big? Just where on earth did you live, Miss Kang?"
"Well, I was locked away, you see. When would I ever have had reason to come out to a street like this?"
"...Forgive me. I put my foot in it again..."
"Well, you know how closed-off the place I came from was."
As she spoke, Soyul drifted into memories of her childhood. A childhood without a name, called only by a number. Hundreds of children packed into a training ground cramped as a chicken coop, where every hour from the moment they opened their eyes until they closed them—meals aside—was nothing but punishing training.
The one blessing was that training had never been all that difficult for Soyul. She had even cocked her head watching the trainees around her collapse one after another, hauled away never to return. What was there to collapse over? This much was nothing.
Five years of that, and the hundreds of children had dwindled to fifteen; those whose talent was recognized were each assigned a master of their own and scattered to the four winds. Afterward, Soyul met Baek Byeog-yeon and carried on exactly as before—training that would have broken anyone else but cost her little—and with innate talent of the kind that appeared perhaps once in several centuries, she rose to the Transformation Realm.
Tch. At least back then they deigned to call it real combat and let me take an assassination mission now and then. Those were fun.
Meanwhile, Cho Ja-un stole a glance at Soyul's profile as she sank into childhood memories, and once again reproached himself within his own misunderstanding.
There I go again, letting this careless tongue run loose and dragging her back to those dreadful days when she was trapped against her will, subjected to nothing but degrading entertainment as a courtesan.
"Come, let us go in. Don't worry about the price. I shall buy you something especially fine."
At his gentle smile, Soyul surfaced from her reverie with sparkling eyes.
"Oh, really? I can pick whatever I want? Wow, Ja-un, you must come from money."
"Ahem. Well, we don't exactly live in poverty. Pick to your heart's content. Consider it a memento of our friendship."
The moment Soyul reached for the fabric shop's door, it burst violently open from within, and a man came flying out with a scream.
KWAANG—
Soyul marveled at the spectacle.
"Wow, who knew they welcomed customers like this. Is the Central Plains always like this?"
Cho Ja-un was left dumbfounded by her words, and just as he moved to answer, two surly men who looked like trouble at a glance sauntered out after the man who had just been flung through the door.
"Can't pay the protection fee? Then you pay with your body. Right?"
"Of course, that beating only covers the interest. The fee itself is still due."
At those words, the man who had been flung out—still rolling in the dust—collected himself quickly, dropped desperately to his knees, and clasped his hands together in supplication.
"P-please... just look the other way this once. Business has truly been terrible this month. You know how it is—travelers have thinned out lately, and customers with them. Next month I'll pay on time, I swear..."
One of the thugs snorted and picked at his ear.
"Paying on time next month goes without saying. We're talking about this month's fee, so why do you keep babbling about something else? Hand it over right now, pay with your body, or—if you won't do either—admit you haven't the confidence to run this business cleanly and hand over the shop."
"Exactly. Give it up cleanly and hand it over to our Blue Snake Society, and we'll run it nice and proper for you. Why not take this opportunity to retire in comfort? Heh heh."
At that, the face of the shop's owner, Jin Seok-yeong, drained deathly pale. This was his precious fabric shop, run by three generations of his family since his grandfather's day—the family trade. He could never meekly hand it over to vicious thugs like these. But if he defied them rashly at this volatile moment, there was no telling whether his head would remain on his shoulders or go rolling down the street.
No one in town dared defy the vicious Blue Snake Society, the unorthodox gang that held this small backwater village of Cheongseok in its grip. To be sure, Gansu was home to a great orthodox sect of illustrious name, the Kongtong Sect—but it lay far off to the west, and the sect itself was a gathering of aloof Daoists who did nothing but cultivate deep in the mountains, rarely involving themselves in the sordid affairs of the mundane world.
Which was exactly why petty unorthodox gangs could plant their flags even in tiny country villages like this one, strutting around and tormenting merchants too weak to fight back.
Heart in ruins, Jin Seok-yeong bowed his head once more in desperate entreaty.
"Please... please, just this once, have mercy. Great heroes, I beg you..."
"Ha! Lived all these years and now I'm hearing 'great heroes.' The world truly is... Hm? And who might you be?"
The Blue Snake thug, still mid-sneer, suddenly found an unfamiliar beauty standing right before him—Soyul had closed the distance in a few long strides—and his lecherous eyes lit up.
"Well, well. Haven't seen this one before. Which house do you hail from? The Byeokhwa Pavilion? The Hyangwol Pavilion? This elder will escort you there personally. No—actually, right now would suit me fine. What do you say? Heh heh heh."
"Move."
Jang Mu-bok of the Blue Snake Society, whose lecherous gaze had been openly drinking in her peerless face and seductive dress, burst into raucous laughter at her curt reply, as though the audacity of it were beyond belief.
"Kahaha! My, my. A brazen little wench, aren't you? Good. This master has always liked a bit of fight. Now then, come along. Right this instant—"
Soyul watched in silence as Jang Mu-bok, an unpleasant smile curling his lips, stretched his filthy hand toward her shoulder. From where she stood, that clumsy strike might as well have been crawling.
Jang Mu-bok's martial skill was, at best, middling second-rate—he was nothing more than a neighborhood thug who couldn't even call himself a proper martial artist.
Hmm. It's not just because I'm from the Demonic Cult, is it? Even an orthodox martial artist wouldn't normally put up with this. I'm not being strange, am I?
Soyul regarded the hand creeping toward her with an air of mild irritation for a moment, then lightly raised her hand-blade and swept it. Swift as a passing breeze, in a single instant, her hand-blade—its edge wreathed in a translucent green gleam—carved a deep diagonal gash through Jang Mu-bok's right shoulder.
The secret art of the Mount Hua Sect revealed its razor edge here and now, in a country village in Gansu, on the far western frontier.
Watching it unfold, Cho Ja-un let slip a low, involuntary murmur.
"Bamboo Leaf Hand...?"
The technique had revealed itself for only an instant, but its result was anything but simple.
Thud.
Like a ripe fruit dropping from its stem, a thick forearm fell cleanly to the ground, sheared away by the razor edge of her qi, and lay there twitching. It was Jang Mu-bok's right arm, attached to his body mere moments before. Even severed, it quivered for a while, as though it could still feel the pain.
For a moment Jang Mu-bok simply stood there, blank, unable to grasp what had happened to him. But only for a moment. His eyes darted between his severed arm and the shoulder from which blood fountained like a spring, and then he crumpled where he stood.
"My... my arm! My arm! AAAAAGH!"
Having lost his right arm—a martial artist's very life—in the space of a heartbeat, Jang Mu-bok howled in agony and despair, and Soyul, as though the racket were simply beneath her, kicked him full force under the jaw and sent him flying.
It had all happened in the blink of an eye, and a stunned silence fell over the crowd that had gathered to watch the little commotion.