By Now, You Really Should Be Leaving
Yi Do and Myeong Hyeon were still in A-hyeon Town, in the land of Yeon.
At the inn there, they had ordered two bowls of somyeon noodles. They'd even asked for a bottle of Jukyeopcheong liquor — and yet, curiously, neither man laid a finger on the food set before them.
Myeong Hyeon wore a troubled expression.
"Um... Dharma Protector, may I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"...You haven't forgotten that this is Yeon territory, have you?"
"Do I look as though I've forgotten?"
"I only ask because it crossed my mind. Knowing all that, to act as you're doing... I take it you have no intention of letting this lie buried?"
Yi Do let out a short, dry laugh.
"Buried? And would that change anything?"
"...Might it not change the number of people who die?"
"How does one speak of death in the murim as if it were negotiable? We are bound by gratitude and grievance. Gratitude is repaid with gratitude; grievance, with grievance."
"..."
"Even if I stop, they will not. It has come to that point. Now there is only this: whether I die, or whether they die. Nothing else remains."
"...You're thorough, aren't you. Terribly so."
Yi Do said nothing, only gazed at Myeong Hyeon. Myeong Hyeon gazed quietly back.
Why were these two men sitting here like this?
Why, with food ordered and steaming before them, did neither touch a bite?
There was a very clear reason.
Yi Do glanced to the side and beckoned. The waiter who had been waiting in the corner scurried over at once.
Wearing that practiced smile reserved for the service trade, the waiter asked, "Yes, honored guest. Is there anything else you require?"
Yi Do said something the man never could have anticipated.
"Taste this somyeon. One bite."
"...Pardon?"
"I said, taste it."
"B-but I'm only a waiter. How could I possibly touch a guest's food..."
Yi Do nodded as though that settled the matter. Just as the waiter, watching him, turned to leave—
Yi Do seized the bowl brimming with somyeon and brought it crashing down onto the waiter's head.
KWAAAAAANG—!
He smashed a bowl, and it made the sound of a man's skull bursting. Which was exactly right — because the waiter's head had just burst open.
But here came the surprise. The moment the broth from the noodles mingled with the waiter's corpse, bubbles suddenly began rising from the mixture.
Poison.
Myeong Hyeon, still seated, pressed a hand to his forehead.
"...The Salmak branch in A-hyeon Town... Haaah..."
That was it.
This place was the A-hyeon Town branch of the very Salmak — the guild with whom Yi Do had incurred a debt of blood back in the Kingdom of Jeok.
Ambitious to extend its reach into the Yeon Nation, Salmak had established three branches there — and one of them sat right here in A-hyeon Town.
Yi Do drew the Wolyong Sword from his waist. At the sight, dozens of waiters — no, assassins — came charging at him.
Ones hiding among the patrons. Ones in the kitchen. Ones clinging to the ceiling.
A truly impressive variety.
Myeong Hyeon, who had been watching with detached interest, finally drew the sword at his hip as well.
...What a difficult man to serve.
So he murmured to himself, then flung his body at the assassins.
That day, the Salmak branch of A-hyeon Town fell.
Rage boiled up from the very crown of his head.
The Master of Salmak.
Mun Hudo, the Black Slaughter Ghost King, slammed his fist down onto the table.
The table collapsed into rubble, but it did not satisfy him. He drove his fist toward the wall. The wall crumbled. A bookshelf stood behind it. He swung his fist again. The bookshelf — and the wall beyond it — came down together. The fury would not subside.
He hammered his fist into the floor.
Kwaang! Kwaang!
The ground split open, and Mun Hudo's secret vault was exposed within the crater. He nearly smashed that too before sanity caught up with him. Do you have any idea how much was in there?
Hoo... hoo... Dragging in rough breaths, he lifted his head.
His two eyes, painted over with killing intent, glared hard enough to bring down the one wall still left standing.
"Yi Do... you son of a bitch!!"
Something irreversible had happened.
Not a branch in Jeok — a Salmak branch on Yeon soil had been annihilated.
The coin spent hiring martial artists was one thing, but how many assassins had already died to this wretch called Yi Do?
And more would certainly die going forward.
He wanted to move at once and kill the man himself — but even that was a murky proposition.
Where was the man right now?
In the Asura Sword Sect.
On Myo Man-li's recommendation — the Flying Dragon Great Hero, Grand Elder of the sect — he had become a Dharma Protector serving directly under the Grand Elder himself.
Whether the man was a newcomer or had long been rolling around inside the Asura Sword Sect — none of that mattered.
What mattered was that he was Myo Man-li's Dharma Protector. To touch him was to touch Myo Man-li; to touch Myo Man-li was to touch the entire Asura Sword Sect.
Salmak was not the finest guild of assassins under heaven, but it stood at the very summit of those who aspired to be. Precisely because of that, it could judge the situation with cold clarity even now.
They could not touch Yi Do.
But Yi Do could touch Salmak.
It was this absurd, lopsided situation that had driven him into his rage.
"That bastard... that damned wretch, I could chew him up and it wouldn't be enough... that horse-faced piece of trash."
And yet.
Perhaps the first chance to end this had been Salmak's all along.
When Yi Do had razed the Salmak branch in Suju Prefecture, the guild had stood before two choices.
Go to Yi Do directly and settle the grievance — through talk or anything else. That was the first. The second was to settle it by killing him.
With Salmak's reputation at stake, choosing the former was unthinkable. So they had chosen the latter. And this was the result.
They could not be dragged around any longer.
This situation — hunter turned prey — had to be reversed.
"Heuk-su."
At Mun Hudo's call, the door opened and a man stepped inside.
"Yes, Master."
"How many assassins can we mobilize as of this moment?"
"...Right now, the hundred standing by here in Jangyeonseong."
"And if we were to move on Jungsu-gun?"
"...Given time, I can gather every Salmak assassin scattered across the entire Jeok murim. Six hundred and eighty-seven in all. Even assuming some of those already on a contract fail and lose their lives, we can field at least six hundred."
Six hundred.
Not bad.
Heuk-su, watching the strange smile spread across Mun Hudo's face, felt his heart lurch.
"Master...?"
"We can no longer live under the same sky. I will kill the Cruel Mad Sovereign."
"...But that's the Asura Sword Sect. To touch him is to touch the Asura Sword Sect, and—"
Mid-sentence, a thought flashed through Heuk-su's mind, and his words trailed off. He had just understood why Mun Hudo was smiling like that.
"Surely not... you mean to shift our enemies to the Yeon Nation."
"I do."
Heuk-su's mouth fell open.
People sometimes labored under a misconception.
It was true that the murim was where the masters of the gangho lived and died.
But the murim was not one thing. Strictly speaking, it was divided.
The murim of Yeon, the murim of Jeok, and the murim of Wi.
Named for their leading characters, they were called the Yeon Murim, the Jeok Murim, and the Wi Murim — three murim in all.
The Jeok Murim had its Eight Great Gate Sects; the Yeon Murim, its Five Great Schools; and the Wi Murim held what was known as One Manor, Three Gates, Two Sects.
"I will make contact with the Heaven-Breaking Fist Sect. Their relations with the Asura Sword Sect are poor, so if we join hands with them, killing the Cruel Mad Sovereign becomes a comparatively simple matter."
The Heaven-Breaking Fist Sect's history was long.
Its position was squarely in Yeon territory today, but in the past that land had belonged to the Kingdom of Jeok. Given the sect's peculiar location, the commandery of Jungsu-gun where it resided was still counted as part of the Jeok Murim.
It was a lawless borderland of the worst kind, and few wished to entangle themselves in the two sects' feud — and so the rivalry had endured for well over two hundred years, something close to a tradition by now.
Mun Hudo intended to join hands with the Heaven-Breaking Fist Sect. That sect, for its part, would surely welcome membership in the Yeon Murim over the Jeok — and if the newly immigrated Salmak could make itself the fulcrum of influence in the Yeon Murim, it would go a long way toward redrawing the entire board.
"Gong Wi-ryang, Sect Master of the Heaven-Breaking Fist Sect and the Invincible Fist Emperor, is a man one can negotiate with. I will strike a bargain with him."
"...Master..."
"Enough. It is decided. See that every resource in every branch is gathered and liquidated, and tell all assassins who will share my purpose to assemble at Jungsu-gun, in the Yeon Nation."
Thus the Master of Salmak decreed it.
And so it would be.
They had operated in the Jeok Murim for ages, true — but the wall of the organization known as the Killing Gate was simply too high. Credit had to be given where it was due.
No matter how much time passed, so long as the Lord of the Killing Gate — the Dark Sovereign — drew breath, Salmak could never rise above it.
Common sense said as much: how could Mun Hudo, a mere novice of the Realm of Harmony, hope to surpass the Dark Sovereign, the finest assassin alive who had already entered the Realm of Entering Divinity?
Even if Mun Hudo ate, slept, and trained like a madman, the Dark Sovereign would hardly be twiddling his thumbs in the meantime.
The Dark Sovereign was currently in secluded retreat, angling for a seat among the Ten Supreme Masters of the World.
Relocating was the right move. Relocate, secure a stalwart ally, and with that ally bring down the Asura Sword Sect—
From that moment on, Salmak would surely grow larger than ever before.
And so the grievance between Salmak and Yi Do began to swell — in a way rather different from what either side had imagined.
I was camping with Myeong Hyeon in the mountains near the border between Yeon and Jeok.
Move without rest and the body rebels — that is simply how people are made. When it was time to rest, one rested.
Across the campfire, Myeong Hyeon and I were roasting a rabbit he had caught that evening.
After a long silence, I posed a question.
"Have you no one? A lover, perhaps?"
As if to say what manner of nonsense was this, Myeong Hyeon gave an awkward smile.
"None."
Impossible. As far as I knew, there was no one under the name 'Myeong Hyeon' — but under the name 'Yacha,' there certainly was.
"Have you no thought of quitting the life of a martial artist?"
Myeong Hyeon stared at me as though I had grown a second head, then answered with words that trailed into nothing.
"...It's... not as easy as it sounds."
Truthfully, it wasn't easy.
The murim was never a matter of big or small debts. It was a matter of gratitude and grievance — a matter of those who were bound, and of those who refused to let them go.
"Yacha."
"...?"
"I will give you a chance. Leave. Now."
As if to ask what on earth I was saying, Myeong Hyeon's face was a portrait of pure bafflement.
That is how one must act to sell a performance. Convincing, is it not?
"...I don't... follow your meaning..."
The pitch of his voice was flawless too. The very voice of a man who genuinely could not comprehend what he was hearing.
I ignored it and spoke on, flat and unhurried.
"This is me keeping a promise I once meant to keep and failed to. Assign it no meaning beyond that."
"..."
"The Sword Emperor will never release you easily — so go beyond the frontier instead, and live. I am telling you to run."
"...."
"And one more thing."
The bumbling Myeong Hyeon was gone.
A face gone cold and still.
And two eyes like frozen steel.
From every inch of his body poured the killing aura of a master of the Five Qi Converging on the Origin realm.
I looked at him and went on.
"I will count to three. If you do not withdraw your killing intent by then, I will split your skull open on this spot. Bear it in mind."
I regarded Yacha in silence. The man smiled brightly. The killing aura did not waver. It had been a long time since a chill ran through my body like this.
"Does Cheongryong know as well? And Hyeonmu?"
"One."
"What became of Geum-cheon Shin-geom? We could not possibly have diverged this far by chance alone — surely you didn't kill him?"
"Two."
The man let his body go slack.
"Our Dharma Protector knows rather more than I gave him credit for. At this point, you really should be leaving, don't you think?"
"Three."
Without mercy, I drew the Wolyong Sword and brought it down.
GWARURURUNG—!!