The Female Expert of the Central Plains

Beyond the training grounds, a woman's black hair streamed on the wind.

It was Ilhong, the face of our agency—someone I hadn't seen since winter gave way to spring.

And yet the aura she carried was nothing like the one she'd worn when I left.

"Master. So you went and taught her the entire Starfall Heart Method after all?"

From the approaching Ilhong I felt a faint sense of kinship. That was the presence of Star Qi, dense with starlight.

"Yeah. Got a problem with that?"

Hwang Geolgae looked at me like I was picking a fight just to pick one.

"No—it's just that with me it was all, 'This is a peerless divine art, so be grateful,' and 'This is the arrangement of Daoist Ilwol, so I'll teach you for now,' and 'If you leak it I'll cave your skull in,' and every other kind of price-gouging…"

He'd beaten me half to death calling it a priceless secret art handed down from a being beyond the heavens—and then casually poured the whole foundation out for someone else.

"Why do you dote on Ilhong so much?"

She was my precious subordinate. Between Cheon Su-gong and half the people around us, far too many had their eyes on her already.

"What, you don't like it?"

"It's not that I don't like it… I actually like it, if anything."

"Then what's the problem, you brat?"

Hwang Geolgae snorted and popped the stopper off his wine gourd with a wet pong.

"Could you dote on me a little too?"

I grumbled, putting on a wounded air at the unmistakable difference in temperature between us as fellow disciples.

"You start by respecting your master first, you worthless disciple."

Hwang Geolgae shot me a look of pure contempt as he said it.

The whole attitude said: after everything between us, you want me to suddenly start coddling you? What nonsense is that?

"Oh, come on. You beat the daylights out of me at the drop of a hat. How am I supposed to respect that?"

It was a conversation that only reconfirmed positions that were never going to change.

In other words, completely pointless.

"Boss!"

In the meantime Ilhong had closed the distance with a face full of pure delight.

Once she was close enough that I could feel her breath, the star-energy thickened further. The Starfall Heart Method must have settled completely into her dantian.

Was that why I felt a kind of kinship? It was like running into a fellow Korean far overseas.

"Why are you so late?! Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting?"

Fair white skin. The curves revealed once the padding came off, and long hair spilling down over her collarbones.

Seeing Ilhong with her disguise shed for the night, I let out a short sound of admiration.

I'd almost forgotten, after so many months of only seeing her as a pretty young man. In the year that had passed, she had grown even more.

"Ilhong. You put on women's clothes?"

I said it with mild surprise. Ilhong shot back at once, as if that were absurd.

"No. I took off the men's clothes."

"Same difference."

"Ugh, it's completely different, okay…?"

Ilhong snorted and made a sour face, clearly unhappy.

Judging by the look of her, she'd dressed up for our long-awaited reunion—only for me to call it "putting on women's clothes," which had spoiled the mood.

"Fine, Ilhong. You've gotten ridiculously pretty while I was gone."

That seemed to be the right answer. The discontent vanished from her face and shyness took its place.

"I know flattery when I hear it."

She twined a lock of hair around her finger and shot me a sidelong glance.

Her mouth said one thing, but the praise had clearly lifted her spirits.

Fair enough—living as a man day to day, she almost never heard that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠kind of compliment. Of course she'd be secretly pleased.

"If I'd known you wouldn't be back until spring, I would've found a way to go with you back then."

The piled-up grievances, though, seemed just as substantial.

Come to think of it, by last year I'd already been an adult even by my previous world's standards. Did that mean she, only a year younger, had naturally become an adult by my reckoning too?

We'd first met when she was a filthy little street rat soaked in grime. Both of us had grown up since then.

"Hey. Do you even know where that was? Do you have any idea what happened during that job?"

"I do. You cut off the crown prince's head, right?"

Thinking about it, she was the heir to the Haomu Gate and the disciple who had inherited everything from the Dragon Head of the Beggars' Sect.

If Hwang Geolgae knew, of course she would too.

"…I wasn't the one who cut it."

A viciously lethal expert of the Shadow Guards named Heok-ho had blown the head clean off. I'd just been stuck on pure defense against the Living Jiangshi that kept charging me, unable to do anything else.

"Heh heh. You two get along well."

Hwang Geolgae, nursing his cloudy wine and using our conversation as a side dish, smirked and chimed in.

Apparently the sight of disciples who had both received the teachings of Ilwol living and suffering together wasn't half bad to look at.

Right. Fellow disciples under the same school, then.

"So, Ilhong—how far has your achievement in the Starfall Heart Method climbed?"

My own Starfall Heart Method was stuck at the seventh star. Beyond that, something like a wall refused to budge.

I could only guess that change would come once I crossed Transcendental Peak and reached the Transcendent Realm.

"Curious, are you?"

"Yes. She's my precious subordinate. Of course I'm curious."

"Then confirm it with your own two eyes."

Hwang Geolgae, who had personally forged Ilhong, tossed an ordinary iron sword toward her with an intrigued gleam in his eye.

Whoosh. Snap.

She snagged it as if it were part of her own body and slid it into place at her waist.

Her movement was nothing like what it used to be.

With Master Hwang Geolgae at her back, she began to reveal a presence that was clearly different from before.

A night so full of starlight it almost glittered.

A man and a woman stood facing each other on the stone-packed training ground.

"Boss, don't worry. I'll go easy on you."

The training had clearly given her confidence; Ilhong threw out the provocation with high spirits.

She had pulled her hair back tight and pulled on black gloves that reached her elbows.

In one hand she held the iron sword; in the other, hidden weapons.

It used to be a short ponytail. She must have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grown it out without cutting it through the change of seasons.

Tsssss—

She must have drawn up the Star Qi coiled in her dantian. A pale, whitish aura began to rise over her fair skin.

It was the same pure white Star Qi I always hauled out to suppress that blood-red Salsung every time she acted up.

Did that mean we were now fully fellow disciples who had learned the exact same arts under one master?

Until now she had only been taught the arts every Beggar Sect disciple learned. To both me and Hwang Geolgae, she had become something special.

That must have been why Hwang Geolgae had told me to call her junior sister.

"Junior Sister Ilhong. Once a fight starts, I can't do 'moderate.'"

I answered her earlier provocation with a crooked grin. Ilhong's lips curved up just slightly.

"Junior sister. That title's fresh. I like it."

It felt like we were bound a little tighter, she said, and that pleased her.

"Then will you call me senior brother?"

"No. 'Boss' still sits better on my tongue."

Probably because it was the title she'd used since the days when we were penniless beggars.

It had stuck by now.

"How long has it been since I last went at it with you, Boss?"

"A while, probably."

I answered with an ordinary iron staff I'd picked up near the training ground resting across my shoulder.

I couldn't exactly use the Hell Demon-Slaying Staff—a name that was pure murder from the first syllable—against a subordinate I cared about.

"Then I'm coming."

"Bring it, Ilhong."

She smiled a fraction more at the junior-sister title.

Then Ilhong shot at me with lightning speed.

There was no killing intent in it, so I simply tracked the blade's path with my naked eyes and swept the iron staff across to knock it aside.

Clang!

The clear ring of metal on metal rolled across the training ground.

"You blocked that?"

"Of course I blocked it."

I shrugged, but inside I was quietly impressed. The speed of her sword was incomparable to before.

The Embroidered-Finger Sword Art she used to display had been the sort of thing any First-class martial artist might show anywhere. And yet learning a single Starfall Heart Method had changed her this much?

Something about it didn't quite add up. There had to have been another change.

Whoosh!

Then came a short tearing of air and a spray of flying needles.

Ting-ting-ting!

No murderous will behind them—which, from my perspective, only made the ambush more dangerous and harder to predict.

Clash-clash-clash!

Starlight from the night sky caught on Ilhong's iron sword and traced soft silver arcs. Blades whipped toward me like a storm cutting through the stars.

"This isn't the Embroidered-Finger Sword Art I know."

"Master remodeled it for me!"

Like the Dog-Beheading Sword Art he'd taught me, then.

I nodded and, with the naked eyes of a Transcendental Peak martial artist, tracked every one of them and intercepted them in midair before they could reach me.

Clang. Chaaang!

That was when ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I saw it—the faint Star Qi rising from her body gradually gathering into one arm.

Something's off…

I felt as if I'd seen that phenomenon before, but it was so long ago that the memory wouldn't surface.

Ilhong's sword tip whipped this way and that like a single fierce gale, wrapping my body. It wasn't one attack but a flowing chain of real and false strokes that packed my vision full.

Clash-clash-clash!

I spun the iron staff like a fan and blocked every link of her continuous assault without a break.

When she realized the attack had failed, she stepped back a pace and let her disappointment show.

"Not bad."

Even this much, to my eyes, counted as remarkable growth.

"I'm not finished yet!"

I knocked aside another volley of her hidden weapons as they cut through the air—then slanted my staff to turn the blade that had slipped into the opening and drove a straight punch into her midsection with my free hand.

Thud!

She barely managed to catch my restraining fist with the sword's hilt. The physical force still rode through her body, though; Ilhong skidded back several steps.

"You're really something."

"Will you still say that after you see this?"

She bit her lip as if stung, then—just like before—began concentrating the Star Qi that lightly sheathed her body even more tightly into one arm.

Along the shoulder, down the forearm and hand, until at last that pure white energy gathered at the tip of the silver sword.

"You—don't tell me…"

"Take this, Boss!"

With those words she stepped into Whirlwind Steps and glided toward me like a ghost.

A mass of condensed white sword-light began to fall on me like a shooting star splitting the sky.

"Wha—?!"

I stared blankly for a split second at the bare iron staff with nothing wrapped around it—then frantically hauled up every scrap of Star Qi I could.

Condensed Star Qi collided with another Star Qi in midair.

KWAANG—!

The midnight spar ended, and morning came.

On the bed I tossed and turned for a long time, body stiff and aching from the aftermath of the bout.

Then, all of a sudden, I felt an unfamiliar presence and cracked my eyes open.

"…Ah."

The moment I woke, Ilhong flinched and jerked back the face that had been drawing close.

"I—I wasn't doing anything."

She waved both hands as she said it. Clearly she had been about to do something.

I was pretty sure she'd been caught staring at me while I slept once before, too.

"You scared the hell out of me… Why are you watching someone sleep?"

I pressed a hand to my startled chest and glared at her in pure disbelief.

If nothing else, I was wide awake now.

This was my private quarters, provided by Sister Eun Hwaran. Why was Ilhong inside without a word?

"You spent half the night throwing sword qi around in a fight. Aren't you tired?"

"I'm completely fresh, Boss."

She grinned with a face full of energy.

Once you crossed the First-class wall and stepped into the superhuman realm where you could manifest internal energy, physical ability rose right along with it, apparently.

"And Ilhong—once you became a Peak Realm expert, you should have said so first."

Who in the world saves that as a surprise and pulls it out in the middle of a spar?

I'd nearly had a heart attack answering with an iron staff that didn't even have internal energy on it.

"…Sorry. I just wanted to startle you."

"As long as you know."

Thanks to that, I now knew what happened when Star Qi slammed into Star Qi in the middle of the night.

Sister Eun Hwaran was probably hunting for the culprit right now, staring at a training ground that had been wrecked all over again in a single night.

Another reason for money to leave my pocket.

"Still… Boss. Aren't you a little proud of me…?"

She, who had broken again and again against the wall of the First-class Realm, had finally reached Peak.

How hard must she have trained, day and night, to get here?

"Yeah. I am, actually."

When I nodded in acknowledgment, Ilhong finally looked satisfied. She scratched her cheek with a bashful little hehe.

"Then give me that."

"Give you what?"

What was she asking for? I tilted my head and asked back.

"The wish ticket! You said you'd grant one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thing within your power, no matter what it was."

"…"

With eyes smoldering with some fierce emotion, she demanded a one-time free use of Dan Mujin.

Apparently that had been the driving force behind the bone-grinding training all along.