Former Client
Just as I was about to step out through the main gate of the Moyong Clan, Moyong Hwi stopped me dead in my tracks with a single question.
"Hold on. There's something I want to ask before you go."
When I turned around, there stood the biological older brother of Moyong Cheongjin, looking at me with an odd expression.
"What is it?"
"The atmosphere between you and my sister seemed strange… Did something happen up on that mountain?"
He mentioned how she had searched for me the moment she woke, and how her eyes had looked as if she had recovered something long lost. Both struck him as peculiar.
"I've heard that before. Seems like every time she looks at me, she thinks of her lost little brother."
I kept my voice even, explaining it away as if it were nothing of consequence.
"Her lost little brother… You're not talking about that Moyong Cheongjin brat, are you?"
Moyong Hwi raised an eyebrow in confusion, muttering under his breath with a face that said he could not make heads or tails of it.
"Well, that's what I heard. What about you? Do you look at me and think of your lost little brother too?"
Moyong Hwi shook his head hard and barked out a derisive laugh.
"Ha! As if. That brat may have been an ill omen, but he was never as insolent as you, nor did he ever insult the Clan Lord to his face. There's no way you could be my brother."
He snorted and flatly denied it. One side of me he tore down, the other he defended—so was I supposed to feel good about that, or annoyed?
Apparently the way I had called the Moyong Clan Lord a "greedy old man" at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering had left quite the impression. The idea that I might actually be Moyong Cheongjin had never even crossed his dreams.
"Besides, that guy is definitely dead. My sister just cherished him so much that she keeps finding traces of him everywhere. That's all it is."
He cut it off cleanly. Just in case, I glanced up at the sky where the stars had not yet risen.
"How did he die?"
"Illness."
"Tsk tsk. What kind of disease?"
"…You're digging a little too deep into Moyong family affairs."
Moyong Hwi drew a hard line, looking thoroughly displeased. So that was as far as I would get with information.
"I only offered because your face looked rough. Figured I'd keep you company for a bit."
"My face looked rough… Hmm. Looking back, he wasn't a bad kid. Heaven simply piled every misfortune on him… Huu. I feel a little pity for him. So stop prying and just go already."
He waved me off as if to say that if my business was finished, I should disappear.
Moyong Cheongjin inside me—did you hear that? He pities you a little.
Not that it excused all the cold treatment up to now.
"For someone whose life I saved, you're pretty prickly."
The moment I brought up the time I had pulled him out of the jaws of a Blood Sect assassin while he was thrashing around in self-loathing, Moyong Hwi's face flushed red and purple by turns.
"Th-that incident…! I already paid the price of gratitude back then!"
"The grace of saving a life isn't something you measure in a few coins. How can you think like some nouveau riche?"
It was only after that incident that the little brat had started treating me like a human being at all.
"Well… I am somewhat grateful…"
The mumbled voice barely crawled out. I smirked and needled him.
"What was that? Couldn't hear you. Speak up."
"…Get lost!"
Furious, Moyong Hwi ground the words out through his teeth. He spun on his heel without so much as a farewell and stalked off first, making it clear he wanted no more conversation.
"In a way, he's remarkably consistent."
Starting with that retreating back, I took one last look at the vast grounds of the Moyong Clan. Buildings rose tall beneath a cloudless sky, their tiled roofs glittering in the sunlight.
It had once been my home. Now it was nothing more than a past I was passing through. Beijing was a fair distance away; I would almost certainly never return.
And the so-called Clan Lord who never once showed his face while the benefactor who had saved his eldest daughter was leaving… He probably found my existence uncomfortable. I had no particular desire to see his face either.
"Let's go, Ilhong, Harang."
Every visit still left me with complicated, bittersweet feelings, memories of my days as a "walking disaster" rising unbidden. But I now had a path of my own to walk, steady and sure.
I quietly settled the swelling energy of the Seongun Simbeop that my recent good deeds had filled, and left the Moyong Clan behind me. The past could stay buried in the past. After years away, I departed Liaoning Province once more.
In the Moyong Clan's grand manor, where ornate halls, gardens, ponds, and waterways blended into one, a middle-aged man stood atop a soaring tower, silently watching a young man walk away.
"…So a Transcendent Realm expert of the Blood Sect appeared, and that youth, together with his companion, defeated him. Is that what you're saying?"
At Moyong Cheon's question, Moyong Cheonghye—her face still marked by lingering illness—nodded.
"The only ones I saw before I lost consciousness were that young man and Heroine Jo Harang."
By any common-sense reckoning, the two of them had overcome a Transcendent Realm martial artist and saved her. Unless some absurd scenario had unfolded in which a mysterious masked figure burst in, took out Gwang Hyeol-so alone, and vanished without a trace, that was the only conclusion.
They must have fought desperately. Fought with everything they had, until their opponent finally grew sick of it and withdrew.
"Heh. This is what they mean by advancing by leaps and bounds. Last time I saw him he was First-class Realm; at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering he had reached Peak Realm. Now he stands against a Transcendent Realm expert entirely."
Moyong Cheon watched the youth's already distant back and let out a soft exclamation of admiration. Manners might have been scraped off the bottom of a shoe, and the boy's mouth knew no restraint, but his martial talent alone was undeniable.
"If a youth like that had been one of my sons…"
Regret. Pure regret.
Then a child bearing the Moyong name might have surpassed Namgung Jin, the so-called qilin of the age. Perhaps they could even have overturned that thoroughly insulting public judgment of the Moyong as eternal second place.
"In the end, even when the Murim wears the shell of the Orthodox path, strength is everything…"
Even that temperament of saying whatever he pleased would cease to be a flaw the moment he possessed absolute power. The only remaining shortcoming would be an appetite that, while he stayed, threatened to empty the Moyong kitchens.
"About that, Clan Lord."
Moyong Cheon looked at Moyong Cheonghye as she approached with the face of someone who wanted something. Where once she had radiated the presence of a single merciless blade that cut down evil without question, these days she had softened somehow, showing a more human warmth.
"Is there any work the Moyong Clan might entrust to a troubleshooter?"
"…Hm?"
Her body still looked frail, yet her eyes overflowed with vitality. The reason for that softening, it seemed, was an outside man… Moyong Cheon found himself uncharacteristically flustered.
"Mmm…"
While sorting through jobs to broker to the vagabonds, Guildmaster Gam Un suddenly realized the nagging itch around his eyes had stopped, and his expression turned wondrous.
"Well now. Looks like that friend Dan Mujin pulled it off again."
Ordinarily, the throbbing of old wounds was an omen of a failed commission. Yet this regular-rank vagabond somehow completed even the commissions everyone else would have abandoned, without the slightest hitch.
"No—he's Eul-rank now, isn't he?"
A Peak Realm martial artist. He was steadily advancing into a realm that was becoming harder and harder to handle. One day he would rise to a position like Jo Harang's, where Gap and Eul reversed and the guildmaster would be the one asking favors.
Transcendental Peak vagabonds were few in supply yet sought everywhere; demand was so high that arranging commissions on one's own terms became nearly impossible.
"Honestly, once they become experts their noses get so high it's a pain."
Money, on the other hand—the thing he was diligently scraping together—never changed its mind or betrayed its owner. It simply stayed put, silent and loyal.
"Hey. Any word from Painter Neung Jinsam? He promised to paint me one more piece with a tiger and a wolf tangled together."
He called a subordinate and mentioned the former client who had climbed the ranks to become a painter. These days the investment Gam Un was pushing hardest to grow his fortune was beast paintings—literally pictures of animals. No landscape, portrait, or ink wash could match the returns these brought.
The moment he opened the market, demand from Beijing's wealthy poured in from every direction. In the end, supply and demand set the price of everything under heaven. Lately he already felt as though he were sitting on a mountain of gold.
"Ah, about that painter, Guildmaster."
"Yes. Is he doing a good job on the painting that will be mine?"
"There's… something of a problem."
"Hm? What kind of problem?"
At the flustered question, the subordinate continued apologetically.
"Work is going well and the money is good, so these days he spends every waking hour at the pleasure houses, living it up without a care."
"Tsk tsk. This is exactly why people who suddenly strike it rich after having nothing are a problem."
While other vagabonds, despairing of a life that could end any day, blew their money in wild revelry, Gam Un—who had built the Beijing Vagabond Association through ruthless self-investment and seed capital—clicked his tongue in pity.
"I've already bragged to all my acquaintances that I'd show them the painter's new work. At this rate…"
Success had barely arrived and already the man was growing arrogant.
"Guildmaster, and also…"
"Also?"
"Word that the money is good has spread far. Now quite a few painters with real reputations are diving into the beast-painting trade. Plenty of wealthy collectors are looking forward to it."
"…Son of a bitch."
That meant supply was increasing and Painter Neung Jinsam's position as monopoly provider was crumbling. He was no longer unique. That in turn meant the value of the paintings Gam Un had been collecting would drop—and with it, the carefree retirement plan of Guildmaster Gam Un.
"N-no!"
"No to what, sir?"
"The price of beast paintings is going to crash! We have to snap that bastard out of it!"
A massive drop in the value of his investment. It was serious enough that the usually composed guildmaster of the Vagabond Association twisted his face in fury and shot to his feet.
"Huh? What's this?"
Hwang Geolgae stared at the two halves of a staff thrust under his nose and asked in bewilderment.
"Can't you tell by looking? It's the Hell Vengeance Staff, split clean in two."
My answer, fresh from my return from Liaoning, drew an incredulous look from the old man.
"Even looking at it again, that's a bizarre name. Why would you slap a name like that on a plain beating stick?"
"What do you mean? It's cool. A beloved weapon needs a name."
Why did no one in this world appreciate that coolness? Come to think of it, back in my old detective-agency days my subordinates used to shake their heads at the names I gave my cars and gear too.
"Anyway, it's wrecked. Got a spare?"
"No, you brat."
"…Damn it."
It had been a sturdy, nice and long weapon, perfect for thrashing people. No edge, so it was ideal for beating someone half to death without actually killing them.
"Come on, if you've got one stashed away, hand it over."
"I said I don't, you idiot. You never listen."
No elixirs to help raise my realm, only a single club to his name. The old man truly lived as he pleased, owning nothing. And this was the former head of a major sect and my master.
"What the hell happened out there? That staff doesn't split over just anything… And why has your achievement in the Seongun Simbeop jumped again?"
Because I had risked my life to save the very enemy who once drove a blade into my gut. That was another special medicine for the Heavenly Killing Star that wanted nothing more than to slaughter people. When I slammed it with the energy of the Seongun Simbeop, it practically purred with delight.
"I did a good deed."
"So what kind of good deed?"
Hwang Geolgae asked with a sour face, as if wondering what mess I had gotten tangled in this time.
"We stopped the Blood Sect's Left Blood Dharma from kidnapping the vice-leader of the Demon Exterminating Squad for some kind of descent ritual."
That was Ilhong's answer. She wiped the sweat of training from her brow as she laid out our accomplishments.
"Aigoo, my head. You got mixed up in another serious affair?"
"And we also ran into… that masked figure with the spiked staff."
The very existence he had once warned us to be careful of. The moment I mentioned it, Hwang Geolgae's body gave a sharp flinch.