Night of the Dead

Working as a troubleshooter means dealing with kids every now and then.

And every time I do, the same thing hits me: children don't know how to mince words. They just demand what they want, bluntly and without end.

Just like Salsung right now.

Kill!

Kill!

Kill!

Late afternoon. A mellow tea fragrance hung in the air of the detective office.

Even as I sipped lukewarm tea, a searing red aura kept scrawling the character for kill into empty space without pause.

Talk about grating on the nerves.

"I can still feel it."

"……Feel what."

Again, without another word, she pointed vaguely around me and said she could sense something.

Instant kill!

The moment its existence was perceived, this thing always flooded the person responsible with savage murderous intent.

Which was why Salsung was still frothing at the mouth, raving that I should slaughter the woman in front of me this instant.

Unlike that lunatic, however, I was a rational man. So I did my best to stay calm and play dumb.

"What kind of nonsense have you been—no. What do you mean by that?"

The Heavenly Killing Star was thrashing so hard I'd nearly lost my temper for a second there.

"There's something strange stuck to your ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠back."

"Ahaha. There's nothing of the sort."

"You're lying."

How did she know?

I swallowed a low hum and looked at the tall, deathly pale young woman in front of me.

"Mujin, why are you lying? Is something actually bugging you?"

Jo Harang, who'd been watching us while chewing on a rice cake, chimed in as if something felt off.

"And how would you know?"

"How? Just look at your face right now. Anyone can tell you got hit right where it hurts."

She poked my cheek with an amused grin.

So it had shown on my face without me realizing. Even Jo Harang, who was usually dense about this kind of thing, had caught on.

All of it was the Heavenly Killing Star's fault for stirring up my emotions.

I pushed the Seongun Simbeop to its limit and swept the blazing red aura away with a surge of pure white internal energy.

Kieeeek!

I almost thought I heard something like that. Salsung resisted to the bitter end, then finally vanished as if going out in a blaze of glory.

"Huh? That presence is gone now."

"……Perhaps you were mistaken from the start?"

At my words she scanned the room, then tilted her head in puzzlement.

"Strange. I was sure I felt something……"

"There was never anything there. Please stop startling people."

I felt like I'd just lost ten years off my life.

The Central Plains were vast, and eccentric masters were as common as grains of sand. Apparently people like this existed too.

"Hmm, is that so…. Maybe I really was imagining it."

This client seemed to possess an extraordinarily sharp sense for qi, almost like a shaman.

No—more like the ability to feel things that shouldn't be visible. A kind of mysterious talent?

Either way, her gifts clearly leaned in that direction.

"Ahem. So what's the actual request? What happened, exactly?"

She was the first person, in the middle of taking a statement, to make the Salsung inside me go berserk.

Still settling my startled heart, I asked the client Eun Hwaran had referred to us for the full story.

"First, do you happen to know what the Jinju Eon Clan does?"

The Jinju Eon Clan. I'd seen them mentioned in passing a few times in martial arts novels—a family that handled funerals across the Murim, with members who all had a rather gloomy air about them.

"Ah, of course. I'm a troubleshooter who knows everything except the things I don't."

There was no guarantee this world worked the same way, though. So while putting on a knowledgeable front for the client, I edged back a little and asked Ilhong for help.

"Hey. What exactly does the Jinju Eon Clan do?"

"……After talking like you already knew everything."

"We're in front of the client. If I say I don't know, do you think she'll feel secure enough to hand us the job?"

It was a kind of sales technique, after all.

Work wasn't exactly pouring in; every single client was precious right now.

And this one looked like a perfectly legitimate request, so there was no way I was letting it slip away.

"The Jinju Eon Clan is a prestigious family rooted in Hebei. Unlike the Hebei Peng Clan, though, they lean toward neither the orthodox nor the unorthodox path—they're somewhere between the two."

A family of middle-of-the-road leanings. Usually that meant both sides hated you and called you a fence-sitter.

"That doesn't happen with them. Both sides may find them unpleasant, but in the end they always come looking because they need them. That's the Jinju Eon Clan."

Ilhong had picked up my muttering and answered while pointing at the cool-mannered young woman.

Even if they found them distasteful, they still came when they needed them, huh.

"Kind of like the Haomu Gate, then."

"Yes, something similar."

"What kind of work makes both sides seek them out?"

"Funerals. Funerals. They recover bodies from battlefields and, with secret techniques that keep the corpses from rotting, return them intact to their families. Whenever a gruesome case breaks, they analyze the remains and help track down the killer. That sort of thing."

In short, they handled every kind of work other people found too grim to touch.

It made sense. The Murim had an extremely low average lifespan, and a single fight could leave bodies piled high.

On top of that, people here cared about appearances and saving face, so funerals were held with great pomp. One family had swallowed that entire industry, so of course they were thriving.

"They also craft and sell coffins, run a business finding auspicious burial sites, and collect protection fees like other Murim houses. They do a lot of things."

"Meaning they've got money, right?"

"Yes. Their ability to pay is solid, so you won't get shorted or stiffed."

Good enough for me.

I nodded in satisfaction ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and stepped back toward the client.

"Have you finished your conversation?"

The corners of her dry lips curled upward as she asked.

From what ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Sister Eun Hwaran had told me, her name was Eon Wol-yeong.

"Yes. Just some office business to discuss. Please continue with the rest of the request."

Maybe it was the pallor of her face, but the more she smiled, the slightly more unsettling she became.

"As you heard from her a moment ago, our clan's trade is dealing with the dead. High-ranking figures sometimes come to us as well, so we do our utmost to send them off with full ceremony."

"……Ahem. I see."

So she had overheard our earlier talk.

She'd been concealing her qi, so I hadn't noticed, but her realm was higher than expected. I scratched my cheek awkwardly and nodded.

"Lately, something strange has been happening in the clan."

Thankfully she didn't seem to mind and continued.

"Strange how?"

"……Corpses have been disappearing. By means we can't explain."

In that moment a thin film of qi sealed the space around us.

If this got out, the Jinju Eon Clan's reputation would crash into the dirt, she said, and she asked once more that we keep the secret.

"My lips are sealed. Please go on."

"Since the Guild Mistress introduced you, I'll trust you……. In any case, our own investigation showed that the missing corpses all shared one thing in common."

"Which is?"

"They were all the bodies of martial artists who had reached a certain realm."

Once life ends, even true origin qi disperses, so they shouldn't have any further use.

Yet someone, knowing that full well, seemed to be up to something far from ordinary.

"Hmm. Corpses vanishing every night. It's not like they've grown feet and walked off on their own."

It was a bizarre, baffling case of a request.

"Mujin, they do have feet, though?"

Jo Harang, who had gotten interested enough to stick her head in at some point, cut in.

"Sure, but they're dead."

No matter how wild the Murim got, bringing the dead back to life ought to be impossible.

"The clan tightened security and threw every effort into the investigation, but we still couldn't uncover the truth."

Until now they had been covering it up with various excuses, but if word of the missing remains reached the bereaved families, the financial damage would be enormous.

That was why she was so desperate to have this case resolved.

"I heard you're a highly capable troubleshooter. What do you think? Can you take this on?"

An utterly grim request—find out why the corpses were disappearing.

But the complete lack of clients for over two weeks, and the office funds drying up by the day, were even more spine-chilling than that.

"So I just need to find the culprit?"

I asked while slurping what was now completely cold tea.

"Yes. Whether it's identifying the cause or finding a traitor inside, please just track down the perpetrator."

I didn't have anything better to do right now anyway. The Myeolmade bounty wouldn't be arriving anytime soon either.

"Understood. Leave it to us. Our office will find them."

I decided to take the strange request.

Hunts for the Blood Sect were underway everywhere.

Especially as the Murim Alliance's armed forces closed in to their very throats, the Blood Sect remnants had slipped into even deeper hiding places.

In that situation, Left Blood Dharma Gwang Hyeol-so was bowing his head deeply toward the Blood Sect Leader beyond the curtain.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Even as his flesh tore and his forehead split, Gwang Hyeol-so kept slamming his head into the floor as if it still wasn't enough to atone for his sins.

"Enough."

"But, my lord, I—!"

Sssshk.

A long, pale hand extended from beyond the curtain.

"I said enough."

The voice was too devoid of emotion to have been stopping him out of pity for the self-harm.

The Left Blood Dharma swallowed hard, stopped what he was doing, and lifted his head.

"So the Heavenly Killing Star wears a woman's body……."

He had found the report from Liaoning Province extremely interesting.

In that solitary murmur alone, the faintest trace of feeling showed through.

"Amusing. The heavenly mechanism itself is being twisted. Whatever the reason, now even an inch ahead cannot be seen."

A faint laugh even drifted out from beyond the curtain.

The Blood Sect disciples flinched in open shock.

"For the time being, it seems we cannot touch her. The vigilance will be extreme……."

"Then forget her for now, and prepare the next great work."

The pale hand that had slipped past the curtain raised two fingers—index and middle.

"The second great work, my lord……?"

"The secret art they believe they seized from us and destroyed."

The Blood Sect Leader folded the fingers, withdrew the hand, and murmured quietly.

"The boundary between the living and the dead will grow thin."

By common sense the words were impossible, yet the moment the Blood Sect Leader spoke them, the disciples immediately bowed their heads in faith.

Travel far enough from Beijing and you reach a place called Anping, where the clan village of the Jinju Eon Clan—rulers of the surrounding lands—spreads out before your eyes.

They had put down roots here for generations, backed by local popular support and vast wealth. An ancient house that wielded more power than most magistrates sent down by the court.

And through Eon Wol-yeong's introduction, I found myself exchanging greetings with members of that very clan.

The founder of this house, while handling corpses day in and day out, had supposedly gained enlightenment and created the Jiangshi Arts.

The people here had also trained in those arts to the extreme, so their complexions were every bit as pale as Eon Wol-yeong's.

"Young man, the aura you carry is peculiar."

"The feeling is uncanny. Like something neither dead nor alive."

"A fascinating youth. Wol-yeong, is this the one you summoned for the investigation?"

Whether it was because they shared the same nature as our client, the moment the Jinju Eon bloodline laid eyes on me they started tossing out cryptic remarks one after another.

People spouting baffling nonsense the second we met.

Kill!

I was this close to just doing it. Calling someone neither living nor dead at first meeting—what the hell was that supposed to mean?

"I'm sorry. The people of our clan are a bit like this."

Eon Wol-yeong apologized as if she herself were the most normal one among them.

"Ah, right."

Imagine some auntie walking past you on the street and saying, "Kid, you've got bad luck stuck to you!" Wouldn't that leave you feeling filthy?

I nodded grudgingly at Eon Wol-yeong's apology and tried to move on.

"But your energy does seem a little hollow. Be careful nothing strange latches onto you."

No, this woman really—

Besides, the advice was already too late. Something weird that kept picking fights and sniping at me had already latched on.

Smash him to death!

Smash the rare client my sister had referred to us? I ignored the nonsense and headed for the place where the incidents had been occurring.

"This is it. Before the enshrouding rites, our clan gathers all the corpses in one place for storage."

She pointed toward an underground tunnel that grew darker the farther it went, until not a single ray of light reached the end, and informed us that this was where the incidents had taken place.

Just standing at the entrance, an inexplicable chill seeped into me, along with a strange dampness carried on the air.

It felt a little like a catacomb where the dead were buried together.

Meaning not a single living soul inside—only the dead, packed wall to wall.

"Harang, what are you doing? Aren't you coming in?"

One of our companions, who had been walking along so boldly on the way here, was now flinching at the cellar entrance and refusing to move.

"I-I'll just get some air out here for a bit……."

A voice far more deflated than usual.

Something felt off, so I narrowed my eyes and asked,

"Don't tell me you're scared?"

"W-what are you talking about! Me, Jo Harang, who carries the spirit of the tiger—s-scared?!"

Her voice was shaking, though.

Watching her was a little funny.

In front of the living—especially evil people—she was so brave, yet before the dead she turned into this much of a coward.

"Ha! Seriously! You don't believe me. F-fine. I'll go first, so just trust me and follow……."

Even though her eyes were quivering wildly, Jo Harang put on a show of boldness and tromped into the underground tunnel.

"She's terrified, boss."

"Right?"

Ilhong snickered, mimicking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the way I usually talked.

Even for Jo Harang, the Divine Wind Saber, there were things a greatsword couldn't handle—and those things were frightening.

Feeling like we'd just seen a new side of her, Ilhong and I grinned at each other and followed her in.