Midnight Hostage Crisis
Among the successive generations of Divine Thieves, one maxim had always been passed down.
A thief who fights is a third-rate.
If blood was spilled, it meant the theft had been clumsy from the start.
And Yang Yang, the fifth-generation Divine Thief, had treated that saying as gospel—especially after her own master had been dragged into the grudges of the jianghu and killed for it.
So when she came back to her senses, the last thing she expected was to find herself standing square in the middle of a battlefield, sword-light flashing everywhere while explosions and shrapnel tore through the air.
KWAANG—!
A roar so loud it left her ears ringing. Dense trees toppled one after another. Flames shot upward, and sharp iron fragments rained in every direction.
Through the fire, Hyein Satae’s figure emerged. Against a blaze no sword could cut away, she had wrapped her entire body in protective Gang Qi—an extreme drain on her internal energy—just to keep herself intact.
Gone was the gentle, benevolent face she usually wore. What remained was a sheen of madness and murderous intent.
As acrid smoke blanketed the area, the androgynous woman who had introduced herself as Mu Hong burst through the haze, sword-light flaring.
In the wreckage of that space, blue energy and white energy collided. Murderous sword Gang tangled in midair, and a violent shockwave howled outward.
The dirt floor split open. Shredded wood splinters flew in every direction.
“This isn’t thieving…!”
Yang Yang, caught in the middle of the terrifying fight, screamed in pure horror.
In that same breath, Geumhong pulled a cylinder from her robes and yanked the cord.
With a sharp bang, countless poison needles shot toward Hyein Satae.
Hyein Satae reacted at once and tried to leap clear—only for Mu Hong’s uncanny footwork and movement to pin her steps in place.
“You despicable—!”
In the end she had no choice but to grit her teeth and unfurl protective Gang Qi over her whole body again. Silver needles clattered down with a rapid tatatatang.
Having burned through a brutal amount of internal energy twice in succession, she glared at Mu Hong and Geumhong as if she meant to kill them on the spot.
Yang Yang had been staring blankly at the seamless chain of attacks. She snapped out of it and shouted,
“Who the hell are you people…?!”
At the question, Mu Hong tore off the human-skin mask and the wig and flung them aside. Under the moonlight, a sharp face and handsome features were laid bare.
The “she” Yang Yang had taken for a woman spoke in a deep, solid voice and announced who he really was.
“Beijing troubleshooter—Dog-Beating Dragon, Dan Mujin!”
Crunch. Crack.
As he reversed even his bone structure with Bone-Shrinking Art, the androgynously charming beauty transformed in an instant into a solidly built man.
“……You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Yang Yang’s jaw dropped at the sight of a woman turning into a man.
Then recognition hit. She clutched her head and let out something between a scream and a wail.
“Wait—Dan Mujin? Isn’t that the maniac who causes massive disasters wherever he goes?!”
The refined young-lady act was gone; her speech had already turned rough and clipped.
“Hey now, ‘maniac’? That’s a little harsh.”
Dan Mujin kept his sword trained on Hyein Satae and grumbled.
“So a grandmaster of the Transcendental Peak Realm cross-dresses without a shred of shame and sneaks into a men-forbidden zone… and you’re saying that’s the behavior of a sane person?”
By the common sense of the Central Plains, it was completely incomprehensible—the kind of stunt you expected from the freaks who already had “eccentric” stamped on their titles.
“I just do my best for my clients.”
The calm way he said it—as if he hadn’t done anything wrong—only made Yang Yang more appalled.
Sneaking into the Emei Sect in drag and lobbing thunder bombs at the sect leader. Client or not, that was even more absurd than actual thievery.
“……There’s something seriously wrong with your head!”
Yang Yang hollered at the top of her lungs.
Then Hyein Satae, who had been listening in silence, smoothed her scorched white robes and spoke.
“Dan Mujin. You must be the Beijing troubleshooter that Gihyo and Jeongyo hired… Why disguise yourself and come back here?”
The tone was pure accusation: if he took commissions so seriously, why had he thrown theirs away?
“I don’t turn down jobs, but I do screen out the bad people.”
Even if he lived in the moral gray zone, Dan Mujin made it clear he refused commissions from two-faced villains.
At being called a villain, Hyein Satae’s face hardened and her eyes narrowed to slits.
Reading that expression, Dan Mujin shrugged and went on.
“What you’re doing right now… isn’t exactly the work of a good person, is it?”
“……I am doing this to survive. To keep my reason, I need true origin energy—or the energy of the stars.”
Hyein Satae bit down hard on her lip as she spoke.
At the words “energy of the stars,” Dan Mujin’s brow twitched and he tilted his head.
“Look farther ahead. A bizarre troubleshooter who sneaks into a women’s sanctuary, or a Flame Realm sect leader who holds up one of the pillars of the Nine Great Sects. Which one’s survival helps the murim more?”
She claimed she had already cut down more than five hundred villains—her own private justification as the leader of the Emei Sect.
Dan Mujin snorted and answered,
“Ah, so you’re a utilitarian? Not long ago you told me about ‘self-purifying righteousness’—that the motive behind an action matters more than the result.”
“…….”
If what is within you is pure and upright, that itself is goodness.
Dan Mujin fed her own lecture from the sparring grounds straight back to her, adding a crooked little smile.
The look said it all: you’re only doing this because you don’t want to die, so spare me the speeches about the murim’s greater good.
“……Shut your mouth, you troubleshooter who stabs his own clients in the back. If you had quietly caught Hye-yul Sinni and handed her over, at least the two beside you could have lived…!”
That pitying stare—and the faint, infuriating flicker of understanding on his face—sent a fresh wave of killing intent boiling out of her.
“Hey, thief. Looks like she’s about to come at us again. Lend a hand.”
Yang Yang recoiled two full steps at the invitation to fight with him.
“I’m not ‘thief,’ I’m Yang Yang. And are you insane? Why would I jump into your fight?”
“Didn’t you hear what she just said? She’s going to kill all three of us.”
Yang Yang had heard it. At this level of pressure, the Emei Sect leader looked ready to silence even her for good.
With no other choice, she yanked a short sword from her waist and snapped,
“Why did I have to get tangled up with someone like you… Ugh! I hate this so much!”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
The words had barely left Dan Mujin’s mouth when a Flame Realm martial artist charged in, both eyes blazing with mad, murderous light.
Blue-white sword Gang split the earth as it shot toward them.
Dan Mujin’s group panicked and flung themselves aside.
In that gap, Hyein Satae closed the distance like a ghost and swung a sword that already reeked of eerie violet energy.
Her blade tore through trees, split boulders clean in half, and hammered down again and again with iron that had birthed pure white sword Gang.
Kwang! KWAANG!
It was steel on steel, but every impact boomed like a bomb going off.
White energy and violet energy slammed into each other and shoved apart with every clash.
Each time their swords met, his Seongun Simbeop reacted as if his insides were being churned. Even while fighting for his life, Dan Mujin found the sensation strange.
Yes—exactly like touching the opposite pole of a magnet.
“……You yin-tainted wretch! Sit still and become a sacrifice for the Moon Cloud Mind Method!”
Trails of killing intent lashed out in every direction.
“Yin-tainted, my ass…! Ghk—and what the hell is the Moon Cloud Mind Method?!”
A life-or-death duel under the midnight sky.
Vast forces that looked ready to crush each other began to collide in earnest.
Night watch was always dull.
Ever since they had fallen out of Hyein Satae’s favor, two Emei Sect disciples had been stuck with unreasonable labor: Gihyo and Jeongyo.
Standing blankly until boredom swelled past endurance, they tilted their heads toward the cascade of stars and started to gossip.
Locked away on the mountain as they were, the only real topic was the newly recruited lay disciples.
“That Seo Muhong kid has this androgynous charm—pretty decent.”
Jeongyo was listing the lay disciples from this intake who had caught her eye.
Apparently a few other Emei disciples had already started eyeing the same one, and a hint of competitive anxiety crept into her voice.
“Honestly, you too? You sound just like Hye-yul Sinni…”
Gihyo shook her head with a look of pure distaste, as if the tendency had rubbed off on her friend.
“But the kid’s so attentive. Compliments us and everything. Don’t you like that?”
“Get a grip. If you keep hanging around and get caught, it won’t end with confinement this time.”
“……Well, that’s true, but…”
They were killing time with empty chatter like that when—
KWAANG—!
A violent explosion and tremor rolled out of the deep mountain.
In the dead of night, both women jerked their heads up from their daze.
The source of the blast seemed to be the training ground that successive Emei Sect leaders had always used.
“Is she… training…?”
But the roar a moment ago had been far too violent for that.
“Let’s go check, just in case.”
If they ignored it and something went wrong, the blame would land on them.
So Gihyo and Jeongyo started climbing and descending the mountain, tracking the epicenter of the explosions.
And at the end of that path, they walked straight into a savage fight of blasts and flashing sword Gang.
One woman in Emei Sect robes—and three suspicious armed figures.
“A—a man?!”
“Those are a lay disciple’s clothes—what kind of obscenity is this…!”
They took turns flaring up at the bald-faced presence that had entered their sight.
They drew their swords, ready to cut the intruders down in a single breath—only there was one more shock waiting that they had not yet seen.
“S-Sect Leader…?”
It was exactly what Hye-yul Sinni had feared: Hyein Satae, seized by a heretical energy, looking as if she had completely lost her reason.
“Th-that can’t be!”
“What—what on earth is going on here?!”
At the familiar voices behind me, I flicked a glance over my shoulder.
Faces I knew. Gihyo and Jeongyo—the ones who had come all the way to my office in Beijing to hand me the Emei Sect’s commission.
They were staring at the wrecked training ground of their sect leader and at Hyein Satae’s unleashed madness, frozen and at a complete loss.
She had seemed to regain her senses for a moment, lost them again, and finally—thanks to my provocations—had gone all the way under.
From her rambling, I pieced it together: the reason she had lured us here was that she simply could not bring herself to absorb the true origin energy of the disciples she had raised with her own hands.
So she had accepted outside lay disciples, then picked out the suspicious outsiders among them—the ones she could justify killing.
That, apparently, was the last line even her unconscious mind refused to cross.
And that gave me an idea for how to drag her mind back, if only for a little while.
“Gihyo! Jeongyo! I never expected to meet you again under these circumstances, but do you remember my face?”
When I called their names, both of them flinched and looked my way.
“……Ah! You!”
“The Beijing troubleshooter! Wh-why are you here?!”
They looked like they had just found something wildly out of place.
“It’s a long story! Hye-yul Sinni was right! Look at your sect leader!”
I chose a method more effective than a hundred explanations.
Gihyo and Jeongyo bit their lips hard at the sight of their sect leader pouring out madness and killing intent like some demon.
Under normal circumstances they would have helped their leader drive out the man who had set foot in a men-forbidden zone. Right now they were just spinning in circles, unable to decide.
So I whispered a transmission to help them make the right call.
I have a way.
The things that terrifying woman had muttered while her mind was swinging back and forth—star energy, and something called the Moon Cloud Mind Method whose naming style was uncannily close to my Seongun Simbeop, coincidence or not.
I did not particularly want to cut down the Emei Sect leader on Mount Emei, where Emei disciples were thick on the ground.
So when I said I wanted to try something, the two women managed a small, reluctant nod.
They must have sensed something wrong with their leader for a while already.
“Then—excuse me.”
The instant they allowed it, I slipped behind them and turned Gihyo and Jeongyo into meat-shield hostages.
Facing Hyein Satae, I pressed a blade to their throats and roared like a proper threat.
“Drop your weapon! Or these poor women’s lives are forfeit…!”
I put a little force into my hand. A thin thread of blood welled from Gihyo’s neck.
The message was clear: one more step and I would open their throats.
The Emei Sect leader, who had been charging in with that eerie energy, slammed to a halt.
The cloudy eyes thick with madness cleared—just a fraction—back toward what they used to be.
“You despicable—! Taking unresisting women as hostages… Have you no shame?!”
Just as I’d expected. She doted on her own disciples.
Even while she was ready to suck true origin energy out of other people’s children like a demon lord.
“Let’s talk, Hyein Satae.”
She had been charging like a mountain beast; now, finally, she looked ready for a conversation.
I gritted my teeth against the killing intent that pricked my skin and kept my voice steady as I went on.