Reverse Assault
"C-Captain. You're a little too close…"
Ilhong, tucked snugly into my arms, murmured with a faintly flushed face.
"There's a dangerous woman right in front of us. Bear with it."
"…She's going to think I'm a man anyway."
She shot me a sulky look as she grumbled, but she didn't push me away.
Still—sensing a wicked, unholy aura from the sect leader of Emei, a woman who spent her life cultivating the Dao?
"Have you told anyone else? That something about her seemed off?"
At my question, Hye-yul Sinni let out a long, aggrieved sigh.
"Of course I have. I grabbed the junior and senior sisters I was closest with and told them the sect leader had changed—that I could feel something foul about her."
The junior and senior sisters she'd been close with. They'd probably thought of that bond as pure friendship. Whether Hye-yul Sinni had felt the same was another matter entirely.
"So what did they say?"
"…I guess I was the only one sensing it. Even when I said evil qi had taken root in her, everyone just looked confused and treated me like the strange one."
It must have cut deep; her shoulders slumped and her face fell.
She'd said all that right after Hyein Satae had reached the Transcendent Realm. To everyone else, it might have looked like jealousy or spite.
Hye-yul Sinni went on, explaining how the whispers had spread through the Emei Sect and how she'd been slowly isolated.
"You should've thought it through before you opened your mouth."
Savvy politics was basic survival in any organization.
"…But it was so obvious something was wrong. Why could only I feel that aura? I still don't understand it."
She muttered to herself, face clouded with confusion.
Abbot Beopseong, who had been listening in silence, spoke in a low voice.
"That would be because of the Heaven-Interceptive Sword that Benefactor Hye-yul carries."
Ilhong, Hye-yul Sinni, and I all turned to him at once.
As befit the abbot of a Shaolin Temple with a thousand years of history, he seemed deeply learned in the rare treasures and sacred relics of the Murim.
"You mean that Emei sword this girl supposedly stole?"
The abbot nodded.
"A sacred blade forged long ago on Mount Emei. It is said that whoever grips this sword can sense those who have strayed from the Righteous Path into the Demonic."
So it wasn't just a sturdy sword for cutting down bad guys.
A blade forged in the distant past with a very particular purpose.
"…I see. That's why I was the only one who noticed the wicked aura Hyein Satae was carrying."
Understanding dawned on her face. She reverently drew the Heaven-Interceptive Sword she had hidden in the abbot's chambers.
Shiiing.
The blade slid free of its scabbard and caught the sunlight with a soft gleam. There was no ornate decoration, only a pure, clear dignity—a true treasured sword.
Then Hye-yul Sinni, still gripping the hilt, fixed me with a strange look.
"Hey. What?"
"This thing… it's reacting to you."
She leveled the faintly trembling blade at me.
"…"
Oh, for fuck's sake. I never saw this crisis coming.
Even masters never noticed the ominous star sleeping inside me until they pressed my vital points. Yet this divine weapon had somehow sensed a malignant presence that couldn't be seen or heard.
Kill! If you want to live… kill!
As if terrified of being exposed, Salsung poured a mad whisper into my mind.
But kill her and then what? The abbot of Shaolin Temple—whose martial power I couldn't even begin to estimate—was standing right there.
"Your real name is Dan Mujin, right? This sword's reaction… care to explain?"
"Whoa, friend. Explain? That's a cold way to talk. Be a gentleman about it."
I smiled as if nothing were wrong, even as cold sweat ran down my back.
But she'd just heard what the sword could do. The more I tried to brush it off, the narrower her eyes became.
I'd imagined every possible way the Heavenly Killing Star might be discovered. This absurd situation had never even crossed my mind.
"Friend? Back at the sparring grounds you said I wasn't a friend—I was a traitor."
Her sharp retort left me speechless for a second.
So this was what they meant by getting paid back with interest.
"…Come on. You believed something I spat out in the heat of the moment? If the guy who shared half a bean with you when we were starving isn't a friend, what is he?"
I waved my hands as if it were all a misunderstanding and took a few steps back.
Even so, she kept shooting me sideways looks, suspicion far from gone.
"Amitabha. Benefactor Hye-yul, stop. He is truly no villain."
Abbot Beopseong, who had been listening quietly, stepped between us and took my side.
Invoking the Infinite Life Buddha who dwells in the Pure Land and saves all living beings with compassion, the venerable monk offered a gentle smile.
"What? But when I gripped the Heaven-Interceptive Sword, I definitely felt something."
Hye-yul Sinni lowered the blade slightly, looking puzzled.
"Benefactor. To my eyes, I can faintly perceive the virtuous merit this young man has accumulated. A man like that could never be evil."
His gaze seemed to pierce straight through to a person's essence.
From the moment we met, he had welcomed me warmly.
What exactly did this high monk, who had spent a lifetime polishing the Buddhist path and seeking truth, see in me?
Awe stirred as I wondered just how high his realm truly reached.
"There must be some deep circumstance. Just as there was with Benefactor Hye-yul. Is that not so?"
The tables had completely turned.
Remembering how she herself had become a fugitive under a mountain of misunderstandings, Hye-yul Sinni slowly nodded and slid the Heaven-Interceptive Sword back into its scabbard with a soft rasp.
With none other than the abbot of Shaolin vouching for my character, she had little choice but to believe him.
"The martial arts I've cultivated… are rough, dangerous arts of the Unorthodox Path. That's probably what the sword sensed."
I improvised on the spot to hide the Heavenly Killing Star.
Confessing I'd trained in the demonic and unorthodox arts right in front of a pillar of the Righteous Path should have been damning, but Abbot Beopseong showed neither shock nor reproach—only a look of deep understanding.
"What matters is not the martial arts you have learned, but the path your life has drawn. That is what truly expresses who you are."
Lately I'd been thinking it more and more: building up good karma really had been the right call.
How many times had it saved my life by now?
And just how far ahead had that celestial being, Ilwol, been looking?
"Above all, that beggar elder in Beijing would never take a disciple lightly… Benefactor Hye-yul. Trust me, and through me, trust this young man as well."
His words revealed yet another reason he'd treated me so kindly.
Just from hearing "Dan Mujin" and "troubleshooter of Beijing," Abbot Beopseong seemed to have a fair idea of who I was.
"Um… do you know my master, by any chance?"
"Of course I do. That man who never goes where you expect… truly, is he not just like you?"
Comparing me to Hwang Geolgae. How insulting was that?
But he was the benefactor who had just saved my life and my secret, so I decided to be humble about it.
"Hmm. If the abbot is going this far, I'll drop my suspicions and trust you for now."
The wariness left Hye-yul Sinni's voice, replaced by the easy, familiar tone of a merchant's son.
"Oh, that's my friend… so you believe me after all?"
When I spoke as if moved, she snorted a laugh.
"You're a little too flippant to be hiding some huge secret."
"…"
The Heavenly Killing Star—capable of drowning the Central Plains in a sea of blood—wasn't a huge secret?
The crimson Salsung, listening alongside me, writhed hard with indignation.
The misunderstanding was cleared up, sure. Whether I should be happy about that was another question.
"Anyway, good thing we cleared that up."
I'd gotten past the immediate crisis. That didn't mean anything was actually solved.
The suspicious leader of the Emei Sect was still sitting pretty on Mount Emei, and Hye-yul Sinni was still a wrongly hunted fugitive sheltering with a Shaolin abbot she knew.
"Which is why I desperately need your help, troubleshooter Dan Mujin."
The rising prodigy of the Emei Sect looked at me with serious eyes.
Word must have been spreading that I solved anything regardless of genre—all kinds of commissions had been pouring in lately.
This one looked like it would be more of the same.
I scratched my cheek and nodded for her to explain.
"Infiltrate the Emei Sect and expose Hyein Satae's true nature."
She said the moment she set foot on Mount Emei she'd be discovered, so I was the only person she could ask.
"You want me to pull a reverse assault?"
"…Reverse assault? What are you talking about?"
What she'd asked for was a kind of reverse commission—swapping who the client was, like changing into the enemy's uniform.
It was a murky world where you couldn't see an inch ahead. Still, for commissions to tangle like this, one after another…
"Benefactor Mujin. Please help her."
A clear, deep voice cut through my thoughts.
Abbot Beopseong stroked his graying beard and met my eyes.
"Benefactor Hye-yul is a martial artist who, like you, is upright and knows how to do good. She is not someone who should be driven into hiding under such unjust treatment."
He explained that in the past, while on a journey of purging evil, he had fought wicked men alongside Hye-yul Sinni and formed a bond with her.
He must have taken note of her upright nature then. So when the wild rumor spread that she'd run off with a man, he realized she'd been caught up in something and took her in.
"Well… if the abbot puts it like that…"
The man who'd just pulled me out of a crisis was asking this earnestly. I had no choice but to go through with the reverse assault.
Besides, after hearing everything, that Hyein Satae woman was starting to feel pretty suspicious herself.
"But isn't the Emei Sect a closed, men-forbidden zone? How are two guys supposed to sneak in?"
Come to think of it, Ilhong could just drop the male disguise and go as herself without any problem.
But there was no way I'd send her alone into a place that dangerous—not when the sect leader had supposedly gone completely off the rails.
"Captain. There is one way…"
And then—wouldn't you know it.
Ilhong, master of disguise, answered with a faintly excited look on her face.
There was a technique called Bone-Shrinking Art.
A strange martial skill that regulated the bones and muscles to shrink the body, used in tandem with Face-Changing Arts whenever someone needed to completely hide their identity.
Crack. Crunch.
The sound of joints slowly contracting filled the air.
Like Face-Changing Arts, Bone-Shrinking Art put a heavy burden on the body, so only masters of a certain level could learn it.
With time short, I decided to fake the face with a human-skin mask and focused entirely on learning only the body-shrinking Bone-Shrinking Art.
Crack!
When the last joint finished its perfect realignment, my sturdy male frame transformed—slender and flexible, as if I'd gone back to my teenage years.
"You're incredible… It took me three months to learn this."
Hye-yul Sinni couldn't hide her amazement as she watched me master Bone-Shrinking Art in a single week.
Outstanding martial talent and freakish aptitude were basically the Heavenly Killing Star's default passives, after all.
"Heh. Captain. It actually suits you."
Ilhong, carrying a meticulously crafted wig in one hand, looked at my newly matching frame and broke into a mischievous smile.
Last time she'd had to dress as a man to enter a women-only zone. Now that the situation was completely reversed, she was clearly having the time of her life.
"Do I really have to wear that…?"
I pointed at the finely made-up human-skin mask and the glossy black wig that shimmered like ebony, my tone less than thrilled.
The only way for me to infiltrate the Emei Sect alongside Ilhong.
It was the manliest act a man could perform—cross-dressing as a woman.
"Yes, you do. Even with your frame reduced, Captain, you've still got this androgynous vibe left, which is a problem."
The diagnosis of a professional disguise artist. Even after Bone-Shrinking Art, my body was still pretty solid, so we'd push the cover story that I trained external martial arts.
"Anyway, put those on and wait. I'll go to the corner and do my own… girl-dressing."
The ironic nuance in her tone was unmistakable.
For her, this disguise wasn't "dressing as a woman"—it was returning to her original self.
Out of sight, she removed the body-shaping cotton padding, shed every last scrap of her male disguise, and stepped back out in front of us.
"W-well? How do I look…?"
She tilted her head a little shyly as she asked.
A lovely beauty stood there with a bright smile, her ponytail undone into a short bob.
She looked like she'd reclaimed all the lively charm of her own gender and age.
"You look incredibly pretty."
I nodded and answered honestly.
At that sincere reply, Ilhong scratched her cheek, a little embarrassed.
Beside me, Hye-yul Sinni also stared blankly and murmured under her breath.
"…Workable."