Chapter 60
Something that really shouldn’t have been heard rang out inside the warehouse.
Crack—!
A small sound, but one that everyone in the warehouse heard loud and clear.
"...Seorin? Your big sister’s wrist is starting to hurt, so can you untie me already?"
"A-ah...! Aaaah...."
Dang Yulin spoke with growing unease, but then came a mournful groan.
A groan so full of despair that anyone hearing it would think the world had just gone to hell.
Unfamiliar? No—actually, familiar.
It was the exact same kind of sound she made when she accidentally dropped a poison vial into the pond where her father’s beloved koi lived.
Or when, instead of sweet-and-sour pork sauce, she dumped jjamppong soup all over the sweet-and-sour pork.
Or when she ordered pineapple instead of pepperoni on the pizza.
It was the exact same sigh her sister made every time some magnificent disaster of a mistake was committed!
"Seorin? You didn’t, did you?"
She asked it with a desperate hope that it wasn’t true, but wishes that earnest had been unlikely to come true since the dawn of time.
Dang Seorin showed her the key, the head snapped clean off, as if it had been beheaded.
"Th-the key broke o-off....!"
"You little—seriously...."
The tip had broken off at the worst possible spot, making it hard to pull back out again.
"...Dang young lady, step outside for a second."
Watching the scene, Geom Mujin swallowed the sigh trying to rise from his dantian and spoke.
At this point, it’d be faster if I just cut it myself.
Before the Great Swordmaster, a chain or a lock was basically one-hit fodder.
"J-just a moment..."
But then Dang Seorin, who had been half-melted by panic only a moment ago, slowly raised a hand.
"L-let me handle this...."
"What?"
"I can fix it...."
Dang Seorin was timid and a bit vacant, but she wasn’t oblivious. Even as they’d come this far, she’d realized it herself.
She was no help at all.
They’d disguised themselves as escort guards, gathered information, and infiltrated the escort office. Her contribution there probably hadn’t even reached ten percent.
That truth had been gnawing at her the whole time.
The truth was, whatever confession drug she’d used while gathering information—well, in her opinion, he could have extracted that information just fine without any of that.
All she’d done was stammer at his side and make her useless little pile of body fat wobble.
They were asking for help, sure, but if she was going to lean on them like this, the least she could do was not get in the way.
If I keep causing trouble until the very end, I’ll really just be nothing but a nuisance from start to finish....
That was not happening.
Fortunately, this was the sort of trouble she could clean up herself.
"H-how exactly would Dang young lady...?"
"......"
Geom Mujin was about to say something, but Dang Seorin moved first.
At her will, inner energy stirred deep in her dantian.
Dang Seorin was of the Dang Clan—more precisely, she carried the bloodline of the clan head—but she had almost no talent for poison or martial arts.
Even when she tried to handle poison, she lacked the resistance for it, and when she tried to learn martial arts, her body simply didn’t cooperate.
She was the complete opposite of her twin sister, who had shown early talent in both fields from a young age.
The only thing she’d managed to cultivate was stealth arts, a single craft she’d clung to in order to hide her introverted nature and slip unseen through the world.
Because of that, Dang Seorin had spent her life being compared to her genius sister and shrinking beneath the weight of it—until she realized something.
She wasn’t talentless. She just had talent in a different direction.
People often thought of the Sichuan Dang Clan and immediately jumped to poison, but the Dang Clan represented something else too.
Hidden weapons.
Flying daggers, throwing knives, feather needles, steel needles—those were how they compensated for poison’s weakness: its short range.
The Dang Clan had long produced master craftsmen skilled in creating tiny, precise blades, and Dang Seorin was one of them.
Her poison and martial arts were only a little better than the lower-ranking warriors of the clan, but her hand dexterity with metal far surpassed them all.
Wooooong—!
Gray qi gathered in both of her hands.
The pupils that were always somehow shrunken and restless, as though she could never quite settle, now fixed on one point.
Kirik— kirik—
The key has broken, but the broken part inside is still intact....
If the inside had broken too, things would have gotten complicated.
Dang Seorin slipped the key back into the lock with her gray-glowing hands.
As the broken ends met, gray qi flowed into the seam between them.
Forging Technique of Metal Images
Return of the Iron Source
"....!"
Watching her, I widened my eyes.
It was too small for ordinary people to notice, but my inhuman eyesight caught it all the same.
...It’s joining back together?
The key, wrapped in that gray light, was knitting its broken pieces back together.
I’d seen all kinds of bizarre things while living in Murim, but this was a first.
Is that a Dang Clan secret art? But this feels less like martial arts... and more like some kind of ability.
Clack—!
Then the lock around Dang Yulin’s wrist came undone.
The snapped key had been fully restored.
"I-it's... done...."
Dang Seorin brushed a hand over her chest.
There. Plus and minus canceled out—zero!
"That’s impressive. Dang young lady, I didn’t know you had a skill like that."
Geom Mujin praised her honestly.
He’d been thinking of her as little more than a future stand for the badge he’d gotten from that clan or something.
At this point, that assessment needed revising.
Though, of course, the uncomfortable truth that she’d just cleaned up the mess she’d made could wait a little longer.
"H-hehe...it’s n-nothing special.... Since I’m from the Dang Clan, I’m used to iron and weapons, so...."
Cheered by the praise, she smiled in that faintly eerie, shy way of hers.
The grave atmosphere from just a moment ago felt like a lie.
"Then, Dang young lady, do you know your way around weapons and arms?"
"Y-yes... that’s p-pretty much the only thing I’m good at...."
Looking at Dang Seorin nodding her head, Geom Mujin remembered something.
The black sword he’d always carried with him since obtaining it.
Even now, he stole a glance at the sword hanging at his lower back.
This girl might know something.
He’d wanted to ask the Dang Clan, famous for their mastery of weapons, for advice on it, but because of their old grudge he hadn’t even had the nerve to try. And now there was an opening?
He’d even said so himself—that he was somewhat skilled in the field.
And somehow, she did look like the type who would get deeply obsessed with one specialty and never look up from it. Prejudice? Maybe. But still.
"Hey—"
"I-I’ll free H-Hayoung too...."
Just as he was about to take out the black sword, Dang Seorin hurried over to the maid in her western-style outfit.
"....."
Right. Now wasn’t the time.
Asking later would be fine.
"Huh...? What’s this wire doing here...?"
"Ah, ahaha~ These guys should’ve at least kept the warehouse clean. It was so filthy I thought I was going to die~ Right, Hayoung?"
"Indeed. If the Dang Clan had known how catastrophically nonexistent their hygiene standards were, they’d have been sentenced to the skewering punishment."
"...We don’t have a punishment like that."
Dang Yulin kicked the wire away.
Clack—!
This time she managed to open the lock without breaking the key.
"Ugh..! Being released is great and all, but the restriction is the real problem."
Dang Yulin, having removed the shackles from her ankles too, frowned the moment she stood up.
With a restriction placed on the dantian—the life source of a martial artist—she felt horribly powerless.
"It looks like removing it will take some time."
As Hayoung said, at their level they couldn’t undo it immediately.
Unless they were by themselves, that was.
"I can take care of that."
"Pardon?"
"!?"
Jjilgakgi extended his hands toward Dang Yulin's and Hayoung's dantians—the Qihai acupoints.
The two of them reflexively shrank back when this unfamiliar man, a man at that, reached for their dantians, but that didn’t mean much.
Slither—!
His hands moved like a snake slipping over a wall.
"Eh?"
"Just a second—"
They were startled by how suddenly it all happened, but his hands were already on their dantians.
Wooooong—!
Without hesitation, Geom Mujin poured in his true qi.
"Hnyu!"
"Hngh...!"
The two of them jolted as the energy entered through their dantians.
The true qi that invaded their bodies shot straight to their Qihai points and dismantled the restriction there.
The restriction tried its best to hold out, but it had picked the wrong opponent.
Uhhhngh! I’m a damn restriction being blown apart by the hot, heavy true qi of a barbarian, yessir! I am!
Clang—!
The restriction on the Qihai points was undone.
"How is it?"
"The restriction..."
"It’s been removed."
Dang Yulin and Hayoung tried moving their inner energy lightly, then nodded.
The two of them looked back and forth between Geom Mujin and Dang Seorin with strange expressions.
He’d broken the restriction that easily?
Where the hell had this girl gone and dragged someone like this from?
The air he carried, the atmosphere around him, all of it quietly told them he was no ordinary nobody.
"Thank you for your help. I, Dang Yulin, daughter of the Dang Clan’s clan head and the One Thousand Poison Lord, am in your debt, hero."
"Hayoung, servant of the Dang Clan, also offers her thanks."
After a brief pause, Dang Yulin and Hayoung cupped their fists and offered their thanks.
Whoever he was, he was their benefactor for helping them, and that was something they had to say.
Though whether they’d still think the same after he took off his mask was another matter entirely.
"I moved at your younger sister’s request, so don’t worry about it."
I turned my head slightly.
I’d come here planning to create a debt and make the matter come out even, but I still wasn’t ready to reveal who I was.
"......"
"What’s wrong?"
"Forgive me, but have we perhaps met before?"
As Hayoung stared hard at his face, Geom Mujin asked.
"Y-you’re the one we saw at McDaria last time, Hayoung...."
"You mean that person? Hmm...."
"Hayoung?"
Even after Dang Seorin’s explanation, Hayoung couldn’t tear her eyes away from his face.
"Ah, apologies. I wasn’t doubting you. It’s just that you somehow look familiar for reasons beyond that."
"Is that so? I’m not sure."
Geom Mujin denied it shamelessly, but then he remembered why she’d looked familiar when they’d run into each other at McDaria.
Oh. Right. Once her face was all busted up, I remembered.
Hayoung was a character who had appeared in the original story too.
If he remembered correctly, during Dang Yulin’s arc, she had appeared to inform the protagonist when Dang Yulin was in danger.
At the time, she’d been injured from fighting her way through enemies, so I hadn’t recognized her immediately when I saw her in good condition.
"Now that I think about it, I feel like I’ve seen you too... It was definitely in the Record of Favors and Grudges—"
Dang Yulin’s eyes slowly narrowed.
"Ahem! More importantly, we should leave soon."
I cleared my throat and looked around.
The Record of Favors and Grudges was basically the Dang Clan’s kill list, where they recorded every debt and grudge they held.
To live while writing all that down? What a petty, venomous bunch.
"All right."
"Understood."
"Y-yes...."
Just as I was about to lead the three Dang women out—
"Wait! Wait, hold on!"
O Naho, who had until now blended so naturally into the scenery that he’d been forgotten, shouted out.
"Take this old man with you too!"
At this rate, he was going to be left behind all alone.
"Hm? Who’s this old gentleman?"
Actually, Geom Mujin had known he was there the moment he entered the warehouse.
He’d simply ignored him because he wasn’t the rescue target.
"This old man is the greatest sculptor in Hubei, known by the false name Lia-rudol. If you rescue me, I’ll reward you handsomely!"
He rattled off his self-introduction like a machine gun.
So this is the Lia-rudol guy?
I’d heard he’d been kidnapped and forced to work for the Baekmun Escort Office, but I guess they dragged him all the way here too.
Pretty miserable, ending up like that in old age. What, did he commit some huge sin in a past life or something?
Still...
"Sorry, but we’re full. Please check the next carriage. Best of luck."
We already had three people to haul out. Adding one more here was a little much.
"Gyaaaah! Don’t leave just me behind here!"
O Naho stamped his feet.
He was sixty-five years old.
A perfectly appropriate age to feel sad about being the only one left behind.
"Are you saying you don’t have a mother or father!?"
"Huh? How’d you know?"
Both in his previous life and this one, he’d been an orphan.
Talk about putting up a mat and settling in.
"What you just said caused me great emotional damage. I need to get back quickly to treat my wounds. Everyone, move out."
"I-I’m sorry! This old man just had a moment of senility! Please don’t be upset...!"
As Geom Mujin and the others turned their backs, O Naho immediately apologized.
For his entire life as Hubei’s number one sculptor, he’d never once had to beg like this, but recently he’d become quite a bit more pathetic.
"Um, hero. I’m sorry, but could you maybe take that old man with you too?"
Having watched the whole exchange, Dang Yulin made a request.
After all, the reason she’d been caught in this mess to begin with was O Naho. It felt wrong to just leave him here.
"He’s got a fair bit of money saved up, so you should be able to squeeze him pretty— no, I mean, collect a nice fee from him."
"O-of course! As it happens, I recently took on a big job and earned quite a bit of money."
Seeing his chance, he nodded furiously.
"A big job?"
"I was entrusted with delivering toys to some inn called McDaria. It’s the Seven Martial Stars series—do you perhaps know it?"
"Ah, that? Of course, of course."
At that, a shadow fell over Geom Mujin’s eyes.
"Well now, turns out you’re a much more important person than I thought."
Crack, crunch—!
Geom Mujin tore the chain apart with his grip.
Broken links clattered down in a shower.
"I’ll take especially good care of you, so let’s go together."
"O-oh... thank you."
For some reason, O Naho suddenly felt like staying right where he was.
* * *
After successfully rescuing the hostages, Geom Mujin’s group climbed up onto the deck.
"What the hell is all this?"
"Kraaaah!!"
"Groarrrr!"
"Shaaah!"
On the deck, all sorts of beasts were running wild.