The Powder Keg of the Central Plains
"You plague demons…! Get out of my inn this instant!"
The innkeeper's cry came out half-choked with tears. In the end we were shoved out onto the street, and as we stepped through the door I heard salt scatter across our backs in a sharp, stinging rain.
It had been my favorite little place for a cheap, filling meal — the kind of joint that hit the cost-performance sweet spot — and now this. What a mess.
"Guess we can't come back here."
"Good riddance, honestly. I know a place where the food's better, even if it costs a bit more. Let's go there next time."
Jo Harang, who'd clearly gotten bored of the Soso Inn's thrifty menu, slipped in a recommendation like she was doing me a favor.
Good riddance, my foot. The Soso Inn had been my little sanctuary — a place where I could still enjoy a steaming hot meal without getting butchered by Beijing's murderous prices.
And all of this because we'd pulled one beaten-up boy out of a thrashing.
"Um…"
"Hey, Byeok Clan kid. You're covering the damages, right?"
If we ever wanted to set foot in there again, we'd have to pay for every piece of crockery Jo Harang and the boy had smashed.
Sure, we were masters the common folk couldn't touch, and we could have strong-armed our way out of it without consequence. But that was the sort of thing some Demon Cult thug would pull.
Ming Cult… they call it the Ming Cult…
Who exactly was I supposed to be piling up that kind of bad karma for? I decided to take pity on the Soso Inn's owner.
"O-of course."
According to Ilhong, the Byeok Clan had produced more than a few officials for the Imperial Court and was thriving in business — one of Beijing's wealthiest houses. Since we were already tangled up in this, I figured I might as well hear the kid out and squeeze some coin while I was at it.
Jo Harang wasn't coming right out and saying it, but her eyes made it plain she wanted me to help.
"Anyway, kid. Spill."
"S-spill…?"
"Your story. How'd you end up getting chased like that?"
Judging by the pack of thugs who'd been hunting him like they meant to kill him, this wasn't some typical teenage runaway stunt. Something had clearly gone wrong inside his family.
The boy pounded his chest as if the injustice of it were crushing him from the inside, and the whole tale came pouring out.
"My father… the Clan Head… he's been thrown in prison by the Court under a false charge!"
Right out of the gate he was talking about the Imperial Court that ruled the Central Plains. Not a small matter, then.
Wrongful accusation. Framed. Locked up. People always tell their stories from their own side of things. I shot Jo Harang a look that asked, Are we really taking this job?
"The Byeok Clan Head is a good man. But it looks like he's gotten mixed up in something. I'd really like you to take this one, Mujin…"
The Purple Micro Star, which could read the good in a person's nature, had already vouched for both the Clan Head and the boy. So the claim of injustice was at least somewhat trustworthy.
Of course, if the pay was good enough I'd side with the client no matter what — but when the other party was the Court, or the Imperial family itself, I wanted to test every stepping stone before I crossed.
"What's so unjust about it, and how did the Clan Head end up in prison? Be specific."
I pressed the boy — whose face was still swollen purple from the beating — for the full story. He glanced around carefully, checking for eavesdroppers, then began.
"It was a while ago. A large quantity of our clan's Thunderbolt Bombs was used in Shaanxi."
That rang a bell. Not just a bell — I'd been a firsthand witness to the Dragon-Phoenix Bloodshed, when those Thunderbolt Bombs had been flying everywhere.
"You mean the incident when the Blood Cult stirred up trouble at the Murim Alliance?"
"…Yes. Somehow the Blood Cult — the same one the Court and the Murim Alliance are both hunting — got their hands on a massive stock of our Thunderbolt Bombs and used them. It caused an absolute uproar."
Yeah. I'd nearly died in that uproar. The only silver lining was that my desperate performance had earned me the nickname Dog-Beating Dragon, bestowed by the Alliance Leader himself.
"They even confirmed the use of Great Thunderbolt Bombs — siege-class weapons. Our clan was in an impossible position."
The Great Thunderbolt Bombs. I still remembered them. Even a master estimated to be at the Transcendent Realm or higher had nearly been obliterated in a single blast. Only the Blood Cult would be insane enough to take a siege weapon designed to bring down fortress walls and try to bury it in a human body. And they'd done it with a cowardly ambush, right down to suicide charges.
"Father insisted to the Court that he was innocent. He denied any connection to the Blood Cult to the very end. But then this strange piece of physical evidence suddenly appeared… and the Embroidered Uniform Guard dragged him away and locked him up."
The Blood Cult really had left their filth everywhere. Their thirst for revenge was making life miserable for a lot of people who had nothing to do with it.
"Hmm. Suspicions over the unauthorized release of firearms and cannons."
Firearms, cannons, and bombs were under special regulation by the Court. With those, even ordinary people could bring down a martial artist — or assassinate someone of high station. They were the great equalizer: one bomb and rank and status meant nothing. Strict control was inevitable.
Of course, the Court didn't seem to care much about the cheap homemade bombs you could cobble together from a little black powder bought at places like the Black Market. That was good news for Ilhong, who'd once gone and procured black powder to make bombs himself.
"Those Thunderbolt Bombs that went off back then — were they really the Byeok Clan's?"
"Yes… probably."
Not fakes. Genuine Thunderbolt Bombs. That was why this was a problem. Even after throwing every connection they had into his defense, the Embroidered Uniform Guard had still shown up and hauled the Clan Head off to their own den by force.
"Ilhong. Does the Embroidered Uniform Guard usually get involved in this kind of thing?"
"Mm… normally it'd be the Imperial Army. Firearms fall under military control."
"Right?"
The Embroidered Uniform Guard. I'd tangled with them once myself. From what I'd heard, unlike the Eastern Depot, they'd thrown in with the Second Prince's faction — or the Empress's. Something about this smelled off.
"After the Clan Head was taken, strange things started happening in the family."
"Yeah, I figured. What kind of strange?"
The incident was years old. For physical evidence to suddenly "pop" into existence one day had felt fishy from the start. Someone might well have planted false proof.
"My older brother came back. He'd run away years ago, saying he was sick of a house that spent all day kneading dung and piss, and refused to take over the family business."
"…Dung and piss?"
"Ah — black powder is originally… hup. That's a secret."
If you're going to start, finish the sentence. Stopping halfway only left me with unpleasant mental images. And look at that — Ilhong, who'd handled black powder himself, had gone rigid.
"Anyway, while the Clan Head was gone, my brother came back with a whole string of unknown outside masters hanging off him and started taking over the family."
With the Clan Head absent, he was using his status as eldest son and a pack of masters of unknown origin to seize control. That sounded familiar.
"Reminds me of that Eun Yang-gon character."
Eun Hwaran's older brother — the one I'd personally beaten into a complete personality remodel. These days he kept quiet and caused no trouble inside the family, and his sister's customer satisfaction rating had apparently gone through the roof. Even their father, Eun Jincheong, hadn't managed that, she'd said. The secret had been the fist-and-foot technique I'd learned from Hwang Geolgae: the kind that left no bruises and delivered only pure pain. I'd sculpted a whole new person with it.
"So what do you actually want from us? You want that eldest son wrecked? Or do you want something done about the Clan Head's wrongful imprisonment?"
I put the question to the boy, whose eyes had gone a little unfocused after dumping the entire story out. He swayed on his feet, his speech growing slurred.
"F-first… I need to meet my sister at the agreed place without getting caught… the time's almost…"
So there was another direct-line member of the Byeok Clan. Brother and sister working together against that eldest-son character, by the sound of it.
"Where's the meeting place?"
"The second ridge of Mount Oyak nearby…"
The adrenaline that had kept him alive was ebbing now, and the cold was letting the accumulated exhaustion and backlash crash over him all at once. Looking at him, he was going to collapse any second.
"We were supposed to meet at dawn… w-will you take the job?"
Even as his body listed and threatened to fold, he held on with pure stubborn will, determined to hear the answer. His face was the face of a man clinging to his last rope.
"Hmm. What's your name?"
"Byeok… Byeok Muji…"
Muji. Why did his name have to sound so much like mine?
I looked at the boy still braced to stay upright until he heard an answer, and I smirked.
"Fine. This job — I'll take it."
"Th-thank goodness…"
Only then did Byeok Muji let go. Relief drained the last of his strength; he managed a word of thanks and crumpled where he stood, out cold.
The next day, just as dawn broke over Mount Oyak.
In the faint light that stained the clouds red, a small group of martial artists made their way along a high ridge.
"He's a client, you know. Do you have to haul him around like a sack of grain?"
Jo Harang clicked her tongue at the sight of me roughly shouldering Byeok Muji up the slope. Easy for her to say — she wasn't volunteering to carry him herself.
"It's called the combat-carry method. Keeps one hand free, and if something jumps us I can toss him and fight. Extremely efficient."
Princess-carrying or piggybacking might be more stable, but both needed two hands, and if an enemy appeared the reaction time was terrible. So I prioritized efficiency and hauled our client up the mountain in a somewhat undignified fashion.
"This kid still won't wake up, though."
By now he ought to have come around and been walking on his own two feet. Instead I was the only one doing a forced march. Humans were heavy.
"Get chased for that long and beaten on top of it, and this is what happens. He'll probably be out all day."
Jo Harang diagnosed our client with the authority of a seasoned vagabond.
"A full day just to recover from this much fatigue and a few hits. This is why ordinary humans are…"
I shook my head. Some of us, at his age, had been stabbed dozens of times, danced on the edge of death, and walked straight through hell.
"What are you even talking about? There you go again with that stuff nobody understands."
I let Jo Harang's grumbling slide off the back of my head and kept climbing.
By the time we neared the meeting place, a single figure began to take shape beyond the ridge. The qi it was putting out was no joke — this was a trained martial artist.
Long hair. For a moment I thought it might be the sister our client was supposed to meet.
Except the woman who topped the ridge took one look at us and flared with killing intent and fighting spirit all at once. Jo Harang and Ilhong flinched and dropped into combat stances on pure reflex.
"Hand over that child at once!"
A sharp, edged shout. She wore loose martial robes hung with all kinds of gear, a suspicious getup that reminded me of Dang Yeohye loaded down with hidden weapons.
"Identify yourself first."
I wasn't about to hand our client over to some random stranger, so I demanded her identity. Whatever she took from that, her aura only grew fiercer.
"So the information did leak…"
She muttered something unintelligible, then continued in a voice thick with hostility.
"If there was someone who was supposed to meet you here and take the child, I've already dealt with them!"
What had leaked, and what had she dealt with? From the sound of it, someone else had climbed this ridge ahead of us.
"So if you don't hand that child over, I'll resort to force."
She drew something round from her sleeve. Not a poison bomb, almost certainly — some kind of explosive.
"Wait, unknown young lady. I think there's been a misunderstanding. If you'd just listen for a—"
A pile-up of coincidence had stacked into an unintended misunderstanding. My group and I waved both hands hard, making it very clear we had no desire to fight.
"Misunderstanding? What misunderstanding! You scoundrels — give me back my little brother—!"
Having already decided we were the villains, the woman simply scattered what looked like Small Thunderbolt Bombs in a glittering arc.
KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM—!