Engulfed in Flames
The Yi Clan was in chaos.
No — this time it wasn't just the Yi Clan. The entire Jangryeong Commandery had been thrown into an uproar. News that Cheonhwaru had burned to the ground spread through the commandery in the blink of an eye, and Lady Sang and her eldest son Yi Jeong, who had been savoring a very sweet dream for a very short while, were rudely awakened from it.
"That rabid dog!"
His fist smashed through the table.
There was no reining his emotions in, and not a single soul present made any attempt to stop him. Lady Sang was the same, Lady Un held her tongue, and the second son, Yi Won, sat quietly as well.
Each of them, however, was thinking very different things.
Yi Won in particular was fighting for his life to keep from bursting into laughter.
This is delicious to watch.
It went beyond displeasure — it was downright revolting. And it had nothing to do with the youngest stealing anything from anyone.
The sight of that pig-headed bastard Yi Jeong, who had planned to hog Cheonhwaru all to himself, being forced to watch it burn — what could be more fitting?
Still, Yi Won did his best to keep a straight face.
Once the silence had stretched long enough, Lady Sang was the first to send both of her sons out of the room. When only the two of them remained, she spoke in a low voice.
"My dear, I think the time has come for that arrangement we spoke of."
There was only one thing it could mean.
"...You truly mean to place the commission."
Lady Sang gave a slow nod.
Originally, she had meant to hire an assassin to kill Yi Do before now. But the plan had been shelved for one simple reason: the clan head, Yi Se-geuk, had entrusted Yi Do with the Cheonhwaru affair tangled up with the Jang Clan.
That affair was bound to end in failure. And when it did, Yi Do's standing would crash back down to rock bottom — at which point they need only see him exiled somewhere out of sight. She had more than enough influence to arrange that much.
Then, once he arrived at his place of banishment, they would send the assassin to quietly finish him off. That was the ideal course — everything would end in silence, without a single ripple of scandal.
Which was exactly why she had held off.
But that was no longer an option.
Even if the boy had claimed Cheonhwaru, in the end it belonged to the Yi Clan. And he had burned it to the ground.
He had to be removed, and quickly.
And so the night deepened.
At that hour, Yi Do had already arrived in Suju Prefecture — home of the Sangwoon Merchant Guild, the empire of commerce that stood behind Lady Sang.
Suju Prefecture.
To be honest, Yi Do didn't know the place in detail. He had traveled widely in his previous life, but he'd never had the leisure to wander into a backwater like this. Even so, he had gathered plenty by word of mouth over the years, and he had lived long enough to read the lay of the land.
The most powerful merchant guild in Suju Prefecture? The Sangwoon Merchant Guild, without question. And its master, Sang Myeong-gil, was a figure of no small consequence — a man who had started with empty hands and built an enterprise spanning the entire prefecture. He was nothing if not formidable.
Yi Do pushed off from his perch, landing lightly on the roof of a neighboring building, and fixed his gaze straight ahead.
The sprawling garden below was the main compound of the Sangwoon Merchant Guild. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated.
People moved through the grounds in orderly fashion. He spotted several martial artists among them — cultivators of the Entry Realm were commonplace, and there were quite a few who had reached the Mythic Realm as well. A rare few had even attained the Yang Light Dual Emergence.
He shifted his attention to the most heavily guarded spots. There were exactly three.
One was surely where the guild's key figures resided. The other two had rows of empty carts lined up outside them.
Nothing else needed looking at. Those two were all he needed.
Slowly.
He stilled his breath and let the tension drain from his body. Merging into his surroundings took but an instant.
Then he moved.
With a faint surge of strength through his legs, his body lifted into the air — and he came down upon a roof of the Sangwoon compound without so much as a whisper of sound. Keeping low, he moved again, his body gliding like smoke over water. A wall rose in his path; he pressed a palm to it and flowed over the top, again without a sound.
Several patrols of guild guards were making their rounds nearby, yet not one of them sensed his presence.
He arrived at the warehouse lined with empty carts in a heartbeat. Three guards stood watch at the entrance, so he circled around to the side. Pressing his hand flat against the lower wall, he slowly drew up his qi.
His energy traveled down his palm and seeped into the wall.
Thud.
A hole opened — just large enough to admit his body. He slipped inside without ceremony. He needed no light; everything stood out as clear as broad day.
He surveyed his surroundings. It was a storage warehouse, all right. He could see massive crates, sacks of grain — goods clearly bound for delivery somewhere the very next day.
It was a considerable stockpile. He couldn't have said what it was worth, but it would fetch a tidy sum.
And then, at the edge of his vision, he caught sight of a few very small boxes.
He moved over quietly and opened one.
"...Mmm."
The sound escaped him before he could stop it. He couldn't help it.
He hadn't dared hope for anything like this. This was, without a doubt, an elixir.
He wasn't talking about mere medicine. This was the caliber of the Tae-eun Ring, the Sohwan Pill — even the Great Restoration Pill, the Pure Azure Nephrite Dew, the Hundred-Year Ginseng. Elixirs of that class.
Its exact name was the Gold Pill.
To think he would find one here. The Gold Pill was refined by the Geumjanghwan Gate — a sect that had been destroyed long ago, its methods lost with it. As far as Yi Do knew, the people who still possessed one could be counted on one hand.
The qi sealed within a Gold Pill varied by grade. The finest pills were said to hold some fifty years' worth of pure internal energy — and the Gold Pill before his eyes was precisely that finest grade.
He opened the boxes beside it. Gold Pills, all of them. Three in total.
Roughly a hundred and fifty years of condensed energy, then.
He let out a quiet laugh.
Without a word, he pocketed all three elixirs and made for the haystacks — the material most eager to catch fire. Resting his hand upon them, he drew up his power.
This was nothing like the small spark of Sammae True Fire he had shown at Cheonhwaru.
Pure Harmonious Qi surged up explosively. The haystack ignited in an instant, and he scattered the flames around to make certain the fire would spread well. Before the warehouse could fully catch alight, he slipped straight back out through the hole in the wall.
Did he intend to return straight to the Yi Clan?
He did not.
They had dared covet what was his — had forced him to burn with his own hands what was his.
Then it was only fair, wasn't it?
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Whatever he had lost, he would make them lose in equal measure.
Lady Sang's backing was the Sangwoon Merchant Guild. So he would burn every last item in its warehouses — strike a blow hard enough to shake the entire household to its foundations.
He pushed off from where he stood.
Perhaps it was because the warehouse fire had consumed more of his internal energy than he'd expected — his body felt slightly frayed at the edges.
"Who goes there!"
A shout rang out. He ignored it and kept moving.
"After him! Intruder!"
A corner lay ahead. He swept around it and pressed himself flat against the wall behind it, holding his breath. Drawing the dagger hidden in his right sleeve, he reversed his grip.
Two martial artists rounded the corner, urgency written plainly across their faces. Without hesitation, Yi Do struck.
Thunk—!!
The dagger buried itself in the first man's throat. He wrenched it free at once and thrust toward the second man's neck. The man swung his sword — with a clang, the dagger went soaring skyward, and the swordsman's blade flew up after it.
An opening opened between them. And the one who moved first was not the man — it was Yi Do. His left hand shot out and seized the man's throat, while his right swung wide; the airborne dagger dropped naturally back into his palm. He clenched it hard and drove it home.
Thunk—!
He twisted aside at once as blood gushed forth. Without ceremony, he flung the corpse aside and pushed off again.
One warehouse remained.
If it cost him his life today, he would burn that warehouse down. And anyone who stood in his way would die too.
Chaos erupted behind him. It didn't stop there — the night behind him turned bright as noon, and the sound of an explosion rolled across the grounds. The first warehouse, it seemed, was burning merrily now.
He didn't spare it a single backward glance. He reached the second warehouse in an instant.
Three guards stood at the door. One of them was raising a hand to blow a whistle — Yi Do hurled his dagger. Thunk. It buried itself in the man's forehead.
His legs drove hard against the earth, and the distance to the next guard vanished in a breath. He extended two stiffened fingers and thrust.
Crunch—!
They pierced the guard's throat. Spinning his body in the same motion, he whipped a kick toward the head of the last remaining guard.
Boom—!!
The man's head burst apart.
Having dispatched all three guards in the space of a heartbeat, Yi Do flung the warehouse doors wide open.
It was the same as before. There would surely be other warehouses beyond this one — but it made no difference. His target was only the goods stored at the Sangwoon Guild's main compound. That was simply how the world worked: the most important things were always kept in the most important places.
He snatched up a torch from beside one of the fallen guards and hurled it into the haystacks without hesitation.
Not enough. He drew up every ounce of qi in his body and funneled it all into his right arm. The arm flushed crimson — then, with a roar, flames bloomed up along it.
A divine art that draws fiercely upon the fire-attribute qi of nature itself, conjuring literal flame from internal energy.
It was also the sole-inheritance martial art of the Red Dragon Divine Lord — master of the Azure Dragon Platoon of the Murim Alliance, a man whose name would be resounding through the martial world even at this point in time.
And how did Yi Do know of it? Because he had killed the Red Dragon Divine Lord.
The man's breast had carried the secret manual of the Red Dragon Divine Art. Yi Do had judged it useful enough to learn, though he'd never imagined he'd be putting it to use like this.
He cast about for any more boxes of elixirs, but nothing else caught his eye, and he had no intention of ransacking the place. He swept out of the warehouse, poured his qi into his legs, and pushed off — all that remained now was to escape.
The moment he kicked off, he felt every hair on his body stand on end.
He altered the motion of his foot the instant it touched the ground.
Heavenly Steed Divine Steps.
At the same time he braced his waist and his neck. Neck and spine arched backward, and his body spun in place — a sword blade skimmed across his face in that very instant.
He gathered his stance at once and put distance between them.
A man stood there, staring at him with eyes wide with astonishment. Yi Do's brow furrowed briefly. When he had surveyed the Sangwoon compound from that rooftop, he had distinctly sensed three masters of the Yang Light Dual Emergence realm. This man was clearly one of them.
"...Not bad, boy. Not bad at all."
Yi Do scanned his surroundings. No one. Not a soul in sight.
"Whose commission are you working?"
"Hard to say."
"Hoh... you're young enough to look the part, yet there's no mercy in those hands of yours. How can anyone be so vicious? Answer me this instant. Who sent you?"
Yi Do looked around once more. Still no one. Not even a hint of another human presence.
No one watching meant good fortune for him — and misfortune for that man.
"I'll grant that you keep a tight mouth. But I doubt you'll hold out through proper interrogation. Let's subdue you first and continue this conversation after."
The man kicked off. He was fast — unmistakably far stronger than Jeong Rin, whom Yi Do had killed at Cheonhwaru only days ago. The man swung his sword. With this wretched body of his, Yi Do couldn't fully read the arc of the blade. But he had experience.
Where it would fall. Which way it would carve.
His instinct screamed.
He twisted sideways — swish — a single sword stroke lightly shaved past the side of his head. He flexed his legs and steadied his balance, and even in that instant he swept his surroundings one more time.
No one.
Then it was done.
Pure Harmonious Qi came boiling up from his dantian, amplifying as it rode through each of his qi rings. Energy roared up through his entire body, a flood of internal power packing itself into his narrow meridians. His two eyes turned crimson.
The man's eyes flew wide open.
"What... what is that..."
He got no further. Yi Do's hand was already pressed against the man's heart.
Amplified Pure Harmonious Qi extended from his hand, pouring into the man's body like magma into a sealed vessel.
And then—
KABOOOOM—!!
The man's body exploded.
Yi Do turned away at once. The energies within him had begun gnawing at his meridians, at his flesh itself. His brow creased. It had been a while since he'd known pain like this.
His current body and realm were both far too low — at this rate, his own power would devour him before anything else could.
Swiftly, he opened the pouch he'd gathered earlier, pulled out a single Gold Pill, and swallowed it. Running the Primordial Unity Qi Cultivation, he channeled every ounce of the elixir's energy into his crushed, straining meridians, stabilizing them as much as he could.
Panting hard, he wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
It was time to go back.
He drove strength into his legs and kicked off. His body rose into the air. He kicked again — kicked, and kicked once more — venting every last wisp of internal energy in his body as though he meant to empty himself completely. Eight times he changed direction across the night sky before his feet found the limb of an enormous tree, and from there he kicked off yet again.
The Eight Cloud Dragon Steps — a lost art of the extinct Great Kunlun — scattered shadows across the back-country skies of Suju Prefecture.
And so Yi Do returned to Jangryeong Commandery.