Chemical Warfare
As it has always been throughout history, great deeds are usually done at night.
And tonight was no exception.
"Hey. Dongshik."
A tedious night watch. Shift change was still a long way off. In a situation like that, when someone called your name in a whisper, human curiosity was bound to stir.
Around the corner of the wall, the sentry who had been taught that nickname by Byeok Muji scrambled to his feet and sidled over.
"Who the hell is calling me at this hour… Wait—is that you, Yubaek?"
His voice was bright with anticipation. Clearly hoping someone had thoughtfully brought him a midnight snack, he stepped forward with a sunny face—
"Nope. Intruder."
What he got instead was a knife-hand strike to the back of the neck.
Thud!
A short crack of impact, and fingers found the vital point. In the darkness, Jo Harang and I exchanged a look—then slipped into the night, dropping Byeok Clan sentries as we advanced.
Shashashak.
Acting Family Head Byeok Jinsang. He had stormed back out of nowhere, seized the clan with bloodline and brute force, driven out the other kin, and seemed to have beefed up the night watch considerably—
Thud! Thud!
—but he clearly hadn't accounted for Transcendental Peak Realm masters breaking in. The path to the warehouses opened up in no time.
Apparently all those mysterious experts he'd brought in were stuck guarding Byeok Jinsang himself. For a runaway, the idiot really didn't know what was most important in his own house.
Thanks to that, we reached the place where black powder barrels and thunder bombs were piled high without much trouble.
"Hey, Harang. You know what?"
"What?"
I smashed the warehouse latch with a qi-edged knife hand and grinned.
"Art is an explosion."
"…What are you even talking about."
Even after the clan had been snatched out from under them by that wastrel, Byeok Nana and Byeok Muji still worried about their relatives, their family, and the people of the house. The lower ranks especially, they said, had little choice but to follow Byeok Jinsang—so please keep the casualties to a minimum.
But start chucking bombs around a powder magazine, and the damage spreads in a heartbeat. So we decided to deal with the root of the problem first—namely, the bombs themselves.
"Fire in the hole."
I tossed one of Ilhong's homemade thunder bombs—black powder packed tight and fused—into the munitions warehouse. The burning fuse rolled and settled among the big thunder bombs. Jo Harang and I got the hell out of there.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM—!
The result was a spectacular detonation. A pillar of fire roared skyward and the dark night turned bright as day for a single blinding instant. Chain explosions tore through the black powder stores and blasted them high into the air. Even with our backs turned, the heat of the blast scoured over us like a furnace.
"…Whoa, Mujin. I've never seen anything like that in my life."
Jo Harang muttered it in a dazed voice, as if to say: so this is what they mean by a spectacle. Fair enough. In a world where black powder was scarce, when would you ever get to watch a blast this big? It was a heaven-shaking, earth-moving explosion that jolted Beijing out of its quiet night in a single stroke.
"Why are you facing the other way, though?"
She asked it in a tone that clearly meant, You're not even looking?
"Real men don't turn around for the explosion."
"…You are a seriously weird guy."
Proud of having staged a scene straight out of the movies, I squared my shoulders and strode out through the warming air.
And then, far off, I saw faces stunned by a midnight explosion. The people of the Byeok Clan came pouring toward us as if they'd been bombed in their sleep.
"F-Fire…!"
"What fire—that's an explosion! The powder magazine blew!"
A blast this size would have jolted all of Beijing awake. It was that kind of eye-catching, grand-scale detonation. If the Beggar Sect boys ran their mouths right, our detective agency might just add another legendary achievement to the books.
"What the—why are there suspicious guys standing in front of the warehouse…"
"Who the hell are you! Identify yourselves!"
The Byeok Clan people shouted at us as we stood watching the blazing warehouse like spectators.
"Intruders."
They looked briefly thrown, as if they had never met an intruder quite so honest. Then they recovered, and the clan's martial artists charged with weapons raised.
Convenient. No need to chase them around—they'd all gathered in one place for us.
"Any second now."
They'd seen that pillar of fire. Our people would already be on the move. I cupped my hands toward the sky and shouted.
"Ilhong! Now—!"
The perimeter was wide open. While every eye was locked on us, a few figures came over the wall. Ilhong, Byeok Nana, and Byeok Muji—black hoods pulled down, loaded with gear—raced into view.
"Hah!"
"…Sorry!"
They scattered round, fuse-tipped objects as they ran. Being a family that worked with thunder bombs, the Byeok people took one look at the iron spheres landing at their feet and jumped as if their lives depended on it, screaming.
Puff-puff-puff-BOOM—!
With the explosions came an opaque fog that rolled over the Byeok Clan manor. People who had instinctively sucked in a breath choked, tears and snot and spit streaming as they gagged and writhed.
"Ghk—kh!"
"P-Poison! Poison bombs!"
They weren't actual poison bombs. Just special suppression charges Ilhong had cooked up with Byeok Nana—Ilhong knowing her way around toxins and medicines. Main symptoms if you breathed them: your lungs felt like they were seizing up, and water poured from your nose and mouth. Basically the same thing any Korean who had ever been through basic training would recognize as tear gas.
In short, I was personally introducing the people of ancient China to the wonders of chemical warfare.
"Mm-mmph? Mm?"
Jo Harang mumbled something around the antidote pearl clenched in her teeth. Judging by her face, it amounted to: Pretty effective, huh?
"Cough—kh!"
"Ghk—I'm gonna die at this rate!"
Ilhong had said that if you kept breathing the stuff deep and long, it could kill you—the smoke was that vicious—but normal people didn't exactly line up for more of it.
"I-I don't want to die here!"
"And for that bastard Byeok Jinsang, of all people?"
"R-Run!"
And there were even fewer people willing to stick around to protect a boss they didn't like—a man who had taken the clan by force. Their loyalty had been thin from the start. Weapons hit the dirt as they fled for their lives.
Before long, the Byeok Clan manor stood empty but for the main hall. Once the acrid smoke had thinned enough on the night wind, I spat out the antidote pearl.
"Damn, that works."
"Right, Boss?"
Ilhong answered with a sunny face, clearly thrilled to have put her old knowledge to work for once.
"Miss Byeok Nana. As requested—we took the clan without a single casualty."
The buildings had gotten a bit wrecked in the process. Collateral damage in the name of sparing lives, I supposed. Byeok Nana pulled out her own antidote pearl and smiled.
"You really are every bit as capable as they say, Troubleshooter."
Money was no object, she said—buildings could be rebuilt. People could not. Ah. Come to think of it, that first sentry who'd taken the knife-hand might be a little sore. His neck would be stiff for a while. Sorry, Dongshik.
"Everyone's here, and the path is clear. Let's go get Byeok Jinsang."
The siblings wore the faces of people about to collect a debt. This manor was ownerless ground now. We ran into the night to catch the wastrel who had brought in a shady faction and swallowed the clan whole.
Taat!
"W-What the hell is going on!"
On the rooftop of the main hall—a building tall enough to look out over the entire sprawling Byeok Clan manor—a man stood behind the waist-high railing and poured out a cry thick with rage and shock.
"Why is the warehouse on fire, what is that fog, and why are all the guards running away!"
Byeok Jinsang's hands shook. When some faction had tipped him off that Byeok Nana and Byeok Muji were making contact, he had thought this clan was already as good as his.
Then he lost them at the inn. Lost them again in the mountains. And now something was coming for his own stronghold.
"That movement—the way they're throwing bombs… It's got to be Byeok Nana and Byeok Muji. Those brats actually have the guts to come at me head-on?"
Guts that big belonged outside the body. He had already shown them an overwhelming gap in power when he first returned to the clan. And yet, while the experts escorting him left their posts, they pulled a stunt like this.
"It's not just Byeok Nana and Byeok Muji."
One of the experts guarding him spoke up, face grim. Judging by the soot-stained clothes of the man beside him, at least one person had fled not outward but straight to the main hall.
"That troubleshooter who interfered with us at the inn—Dan Mujin—has joined them."
The man at the expert's side nodded hard, insisting he had seen him with his own eyes.
"Dan Mujin…? That troubleshooter who stood against the Blood Cult, walked straight in the front gate of the Sichuan Tang Family Manor, and even cut down jiangshi—that one?"
A name that had been getting very famous in Beijing lately. A peculiar troubleshooter who, if you only asked, would solve anything—literally anything—and who was already the talk of high places.
"Yes. It's definitely him."
"What the hell—why would a troubleshooter like that help a pair of penniless brats? If he's going to help someone, it should be me! I've got the money!"
Most troubleshooters came from the unorthodox path and were notoriously greedy. It wasn't as if some hired blade was suddenly playing chivalrous hero. Byeok Jinsang slammed the railing again and again, unable to make sense of it.
"That Dan Mujin fellow is a bit of an odd one. They say he moves with an eye on the future rather than the immediate present. In any case, he takes jobs even without payment now and then."
A completely different breed from the usual troubleshooters who would claw for an advance on anything.
"What…?"
In this cold, hard Beijing, someone running around that hard without any real reward? Was the man even sane? No wonder the capital's beggars wouldn't stop talking him up and spreading his name.
"Damn it all—why us, of all people. There's even a high personage from the Imperial Palace mixed up in this side of things. Is that bastard not afraid of anything!"
"Yes. In practice, he really does just charge ahead with nothing to fear. Looking at his track record so far…"
Which was why people were lining up for him these days. He took jobs orthodox sects and wandering swordsmen shied away from, drove them through without hesitation, and had never failed yet.
"Hell. They've already pushed this far."
A Transcendental Peak Realm expert who couldn't be bribed, couldn't be threatened, and ran wild on his own terms. Knowing that man was charging straight at him, Byeok Jinsang felt the same dread as a raging bull bearing down.
"L-Let's run. If we get clear and plan for later, His Excellency will somehow…"
Byeok Jinsang meant to buy time with the experts the faction had lent him and slip away. But that escape plan died the moment the rooftop door exploded inward under a kick.
"Where do you think you're going, you son of a bitch!"
CRASH!
The entrance shattered. The guard who had been reaching for the latch went flying. Against a night sky burning red, a man walked into the room with a white flash flickering in both eyes.
Seeing him, Byeok Jinsang—hidden among his escorts—sucked in a sharp breath.
"Good gods. The monster from all those vicious rumors… was some green kid this young…?"
From the track record alone, you pictured a middle-aged master who had been through every kind of hell. Hearing that, Dan Mujin's face twisted hard.
"This bastard. First thing out of his mouth when he sees my face is 'vicious.' You need a beating."