The Path of Radiant Ascension
"Boss! Get out here!!!"
My voice rang through the inn. What followed was a suffocating silence. Though they weren't martial artists themselves, the common folk who lived their lives brushing up against the murim world knew enough to drop their gazes and clamp their mouths shut. They moved carefully, doing everything they could to stay out of my way and keep from souring my mood.
I swept my eyes across the inn, gleaming in the stillness. My Heavenly Eye pierced the walls and picked out everyone still hiding. The cook was trembling in a corner of the kitchen, and the people holed up in the guest rooms were quietly waiting for the whole thing to blow over.
I saw the innkeeper last night. A fat middle-aged man with a mole beside his nose.
He wasn't here.
I scoured the entire inn three times over and still couldn't find him.
…He ran.
That much was certain. The innkeeper had been an assassin, same as the dead waitress. The moment he decided things had gone sideways, he'd bolted.
The cook in the kitchen looks like a regular civilian with no connection to any of this.
I sat down in a chair. Losing one of them irritated me, but I couldn't take it out on everyone still here. It was broad daylight. Far too many eyes watching.
I stayed put, doing nothing at all. When the stench of blood started to grate on me, I kicked the corpse and the bowl of fish porridge into a corner with my foot.
No one remained nearby. Once it became clear I wasn't going to do anything further, the inn's customers slipped out like rats, one by one.
BOOM!
The inn door exploded inward as martial artists stormed in. The character for "Seon" emblazoned on the chests of their martial robes stood out with particular brightness. Roughly twenty of them poured inside, surrounding me and radiating raw intimidation.
"…"
If I fought them like this without releasing my seals, I would die. Fortunately, they didn't seem interested in killing me.
Footsteps approached at a measured pace. A man entered the inn late, walking with calm deliberation. A familiar face. Seon Hae-do. Head of the Seon Clan. He dropped into the seat across from me.
"Killing someone in broad daylight at an inn in Haga City… Does the Seon Clan look that much of a joke to you?"
"…"
"Shall I take this as a declaration of war from the Heavenly Demon Cult?"
"This is personal. The dead one wasn't a waitress — she was an assassin who tried to kill me. Search the body. You'll find a bottle of poison."
Seon Hae-do gestured to his men. Reading his intent, they immediately began rifling through the waitress's corpse.
"It's here. A poison vial and a dagger. This one was an assassin. Judging by the dagger's design, she looks to be from the Plague Assassin Corps."
"…I see. Then this is murim business, and none of my concern."
Seon Hae-do rose without lingering. He looked down at me with cold eyes.
As head of the Seon Clan, Seon Hae-do was obligated to maintain order in Haga City. He was the city's representative, after all, and held the authority to summarily execute criminals who committed murder within its walls.
But once a matter became murim business, the story changed. If ordinary people got caught in a clash between martial artists, that was one thing — but assassins were treated as neither martial artists nor civilians. They were criminals. Killing an assassin out in the open was self-defense, pure and simple.
"The great hero who just happened to be passing through. Was that you?"
"You show up out of nowhere and start spouting nonsense."
"Bodies were found in an alley. Local thugs who'd been hanging around there were slaughtered without mercy. When we estimated the time of death, it lined up with when you left the Seon Clan estate. And the alley itself is close to the estate."
"So I killed them, is that it?"
"Didn't you?"
"Evidence?"
"…"
"Witnesses, even?"
"…"
"So you've got nothing. Don't waste my time over something you can't prove."
Seon Hae-do's face twisted for a split second before smoothing back into a blank mask — the kind of shift that looked like a face-changing technique.
"…You're a rather lucky man."
"I do tend to be lucky."
"I hope that luck holds out to the very end."
Seon Hae-do left the inn with his men. Outside, his subordinates began explaining the situation to the gathered commoners.
Why did Seon Hae-do come in person? Sending his men alone would have been enough. Did he come to kill me?
No. That wasn't it. With the Heavenly Demon Cult watching, he couldn't openly make a move against me.
Was his goal to use this incident as a pretext to detain me? …No. For that, he left without doing a thing. All he did was glare at me. …Glare at me?
I understood Seon Hae-do's purpose.
He had come to see for himself whether I was still in one piece.
He was the one who hired last night's assassin, after all. He found out I was alive and came to check how intact I still was. If I'd been injured, he probably would have sneered his fill and walked off.
Tsk.
I clicked my tongue.
Seon Hae-do was a martial artist who had stepped into the realm of Ogi. His eye for detail was beyond that of a master. He would have noticed that my right arm wasn't in normal condition.
…No need for me to get restless. I was planning to use the state of my right arm as bait for him anyway.
I spent the rest of the morning gathering information on Chu Jeo, then headed for the Seon Clan estate around noon.
The gatekeepers glared at me, visibly tense.
I drew inner energy up from my dantian. It rose and filled my lungs. Like a dragon unleashing its breath, I expelled the energy as I roared:
"Yeom Gu-seok of the Heavenly Demon Cult's Island Lightning Pavilion has come! Chu Jeo, guest retainer of the Seon Clan! Traitor to the Heavenly Demon Cult! Fire Feather Demon Sword Chu Jeo! I challenge you to a duel!"
"…"
No answer came.
The gatekeepers stood frozen in place, as if under prior orders to do nothing at all.
I shouted again.
"Chu Jeo! You vile, cowardly bastard!! I respect your parents! If I had been your father, I would have crushed a disgusting child like you to death with a rock! But your parents settled for simply abandoning you! Oh, how merciful! I believe your parents were the reincarnation of the Buddha himself!"
"…"
"Chu Jeo! You filthy traitor! I will kill you without fail!"
"…"
Still no answer.
I spat on the Seon Clan's front gate and turned away.
"Chu Jeo, calm yourself."
Seon Hae-do spoke urgently.
Chu Jeo clenched his fists, his entire body trembling. A fierce blaze of rage burned in his chest, screaming at him to go outside right now and kill the man.
"Clan Head…. That is the most vicious abuse I have heard in decades…!"
Chu Jeo had no tolerance for insults.
He was a martial artist of the second stage of Chulji. Having broken through the wall of Chulji, he was treated with the deference due a master. He had always striven to maintain a master's dignity, and when he conducted himself with dignity first, the other party generally responded in kind. Being subjected to such open mockery was a first for him.
"A frightened dog always barks the loudest. It's proof the man is getting desperate. He's already in the palm of our hand — there's no need to play along with his thrashing."
"You said his right arm isn't normal. At that level, I could beat him in a duel."
"That information isn't confirmed. Looking at how urgently he came calling… it means he believes he can win… He likely has some trump card. And listen well. I want that man to suffer before dying a miserable death. Chu Jeo, cool your rage and wait for now. He will meet a wretched end in Haga City's public square."
"Hoo. I'll trust you and wait, Clan Head. Do you intend to keep using the Plague Assassin Corps?"
"The Corps Master himself will move."
"…You've hired even the Corps Master? That must have cost a fortune… Impressive."
"Not quite. The man butchered one of their assassins so pitifully at the inn that word of a Plague Assassin Corps killer drowning in fish porridge has spread across all of Haga City in an instant."
"A blow to the Corps' reputation, then."
"An assassin guild is finished the moment it starts looking like a joke. Well, the Corps Master won't be the one to kill him, so don't worry. That privilege is yours."
"I'll be waiting for that moment to come as soon as possible."
Chu Jeo ground his teeth and left for the training grounds.
A few minutes after Chu Jeo departed, Seon Hae-do brought his fist down and smashed a table to splinters.
"Yeom Gu-seok… you goddamn bastard…."
Yeom Gu-seok had stood before the Seon Clan's front gate and openly provoked Chu Jeo at the top of his lungs. It was proof that Yeom Gu-seok held the Seon Clan in complete contempt. Seon Hae-do soothed his boiling guts by imagining Yeom Gu-seok dying miserably in a few days' time.
"Y-Young hero! Forgive us! The establishment's mistress has ordered that you not be allowed inside!"
"…"
"We're sorry!!"
Led by the brothel's manager, men of the black path bowed at a full ninety degrees before me.
This was the third time I'd been turned away at a brothel's door.
The reason was the incident I'd caused at the inn earlier that day. They had no interest in letting a martial artist with a high chance of causing trouble into their establishment.
I turned around without a word.
The Seon Clan was watching me like a hawk, and the Heavenly Demon Cult's observers would be tracking my every move. Raising hell in a brothel without any justification would cost me far too much down the line.
As evening fell and the pleasure district came to life, I walked its streets, thinking.
Maybe I should hit up a regular whorehouse for once. They won't match the high-class courtesans of a proper brothel… but the expensive ones should still be decent-looking…
I stopped cold.
My hand shot out and seized the wrist of a boy passing beside me. He looked to be in his early teens, and a sharp dagger was clutched in his hand. A moment slower and it would have been buried in my gut.
"…You hid your presence perfectly. How did you notice?"
The voice belonged to a child, matching the outward appearance. But the speech and the air around him reeked of bloodlust.
Good thing I've been keeping the Heavenly Eye active since this afternoon.
I'd been scanning my surroundings with the Heavenly Eye the whole time. It was a bit tiring, but nothing beat it as a countermeasure against assassins.
"You think I won't kill you just because you're wearing a child's face?"
I tightened my grip, intending to crush the boy's wrist. But before I could, his wrist slipped free of my hand. A bizarre sensation — as if the boy's wrist had suddenly turned to smoke and vanished.
Charna.
Without a word of warning, I cut the boy down.
No fountain of blood erupted from his body. Instead, the boy's form warped and vanished like a phantom.
— The Plague Assassin Corps is watching you! Drown in the terror of death!
His voice transmission lingered by my ear.
"…"
Pain surged through the right arm that had taken the hit from last night's assassin. The price of forcing it to move. It was starting to bother me, so I used Complete Recovery.
Complete Recovery
All physical wounds healed. Status ailments cured. Stamina restored.
Not only did my arm recover — the fatigue that had been quietly accumulating in my body vanished as well. Feeling considerably refreshed, I walked out of the city.