In Beijing's Bustling District
In the martial world of the Central Plains, there existed a handful of phenomena that defied all common sense.
Secret arts that raised the dead. Taoist sages who read and leaked the secrets of Heaven. And the Divine Maiden of the Demonic Cult, who divined revelations from within flickering flames.
From the distant mountains of Sipmandaesan, masters of the Demonic Cult had come and told Heuk Jin-jo everything the Divine Maiden had seen in the fire.
As proof of their pact, they had named a traitor who might one day turn on him. And that traitor's description matched Il-hye-hyang, Master of the Sinbigak, who oversaw Haoman's entire machinery of intelligence gathering and analysis, down to the last detail.
"I knew it. I knew something was off…! The Sinbigak processes every scrap of information across the Central Plains — so how the hell have they still not found Honggeum?!"
The current Gate Lord of Haoman, Heuk Jin-jo, clenched the hilt of his short blade in fury. Leading his subordinates, he burst out of the back alleys and headed straight for Beijing's red-light district.
The moment a throng of grim-faced martial artists poured into the streets, the district's patrons flinched in alarm.
"Gate Lord! Honghwaru is in sight. Your orders?"
Weapons already in hand, they closed in on none other than Honghwaru — the heart of Haoman's intelligence network. Even knowing the place would be exposed as a Haoman cell the moment they made a scene, Heuk Jin-jo still marched in at the head of a full contingent of Haoman operatives.
"Storm the place and find Il-hye-hyang! She must be taken — no exceptions!"
The doorkeepers at the main gate froze in confusion as fellow Haoman agents came crashing through. Then the Gate Lord's order to charge rang out.
At roughly the same hour, deep in Honghwaru's basement, Sinbigak Master Il-hye-hyang had every scrap of her attention fixed on an extraordinarily rare piece of news her subordinate had carried in from afar.
"So you're saying… you've found the place where the Upper Spirit and the Lower Spirit are in seclusion?"
Il-hye-hyang's eyes went round as she made her subordinate repeat it.
The legendary mysterious masters who would obey a single command from whoever held the seal of the Gate Lord of Haoman. They were not mere stories. They were real — and only now had their trail finally surfaced.
"Not the place of seclusion itself… We've found a lead that can reach them. Yes, ma'am."
An indirect clue rather than a direct one. Still, after dismissing so many wild rumors for so long, even a slender thread felt like a miracle.
"Ha… At last…!"
As Master of the Sinbigak, charged with collating every scrap of Haoman intelligence, her inability to even track these reclusive hermits had been a disgrace. Heuk Jin-jo had ordered her to report the Upper Spirit and Lower Spirit's location to him first, above all else — but Il-hye-hyang intended to tell Young Mistress Honggeum before anyone else.
"Send a dispatch rider to Young Mistress Honggeum. And prepare to move out and follow the trail."
Young Mistress Honggeum had lately shut herself away in a merchant house, lost in the depths of training. Il-hye-hyang was certain the girl was grinding herself down for the sake of revenge. Surely she would never push herself to the bone over something as frivolous as a man.
"If our movements are too large, Heuk Jin-jo's side may grow suspicious."
"Which is why we move carefully. Without leaving a trace."
She had joined hands with the very person she had been ordered to find and kill. That alone made this rebellion against the new Gate Lord — high treason in all but name.
"Of course, that man Dan Mujin becoming a master of the Transcendent Realm wouldn't be a bad approach either."
The troubleshooter who had once charged straight through the front doors of her Honghwaru. If he reached the Transcendent Realm, he would be strong enough to go head-to-head with Haoman's core forces. Of course, every Haoman branch was organized as a cell network — crushing the head would not automatically deliver every branch into their hands. The moment the head was cut off, the rest would simply slip beneath the surface. The whole of Haoman might splinter like the warring states of old.
Which was why the best path was still to raise the Gate Lord's seal of true legitimacy, and through the Upper Spirit and Lower Spirit seize command of every branch at once. No tedious branch-by-branch persuasion. In a single stroke, they could take the whole of Haoman across the Central Plains.
"I need to find them as soon as possible and drive this parasite out."
She felt the presence of the Yin-Yang Gu lodged in her chest. A tool she had once used so freely to turn high-ranking men into puppets — and now she was the one wearing it.
And then—
CRASH!
A roar of destruction from the front gate shattered her thoughts.
"What— Who the hell are you people?!"
"You scoundrels…! Gah!"
"Kyaaah!"
The sounds of things breaking and shattering rocked Honghwaru from end to end. Something had clearly gone wrong. Il-hye-hyang bolted from the basement and raced upstairs — only to see her own establishment transformed into utter chaos in the blink of an eye.
Windows and expensive liquor bottles smashed. Tables split in two. Haoman operatives herding terrified patrons out into the street. Courtesans screamed and fled in every direction under the sudden raid. And through the middle of it all poured martial artists armed with blades and swords — and at their center…
"Gate Lord of Haoman! What is the meaning of this?!"
She rounded on Heuk Jin-jo, who was directing the assault, her voice sharp as a needle. Once Honghwaru was exposed like this, it could never again serve as an intelligence hub.
"Master of the Sinbigak. We've received a report that you have turned traitor."
Heuk Jin-jo muttered it right there in front of everyone, as if he already knew every detail of a betrayal she had kept under the tightest secrecy. Il-hye-hyang's brows twitched.
"I don't know what you're talking about…"
"Master of the Sinbigak. I intend to take you into temporary custody and tear this place apart. If you have nothing to hide, you'll cooperate with the investigation, won't you?"
"…"
In the basement right now lay the lead that could reach the Upper Spirit and the Lower Spirit. And a mountain of secret correspondence with Honggeum. Discovery of her treason was only a matter of time.
In that case…
"Honghwaru guards — stop Heuk Jin-jo! Cut us an escape route!"
She had no choice but to get herself out of there alive.
"You bitch! I knew it!"
The moment Il-hye-hyang shouted in desperation, Heuk Jin-jo roared as if he had been waiting for exactly that.
"You insane woman! So hard up for someone to crawl into bed with that you sided with the daughter of the man you betrayed…!"
His voice was thick with disbelief and contempt. Without knowing about the Gu worm buried in her body, of course he would react that way.
"Kill them! Wipe them all out — including Il-hye-hyang! Leave no one alive!"
He drew the short blade that had once stabbed Hong Gak-jan in the back and ordered every one of Honghwaru's guards put to the sword.
Clang-clang-clang!
With the exits sealed and no quarter given, Honghwaru's guards fought with everything they had — but they could not stand against Haoman's elite. One after another they went down like autumn leaves in a gale.
"Ghk!"
"S-spare me… Urgh!"
Watching her people fall one by one before her eyes, Il-hye-hyang's face drained into despair. If she was taken, she would die under torture after spilling every last secret she knew. That much was certain.
"Wh-what do I do…!"
She had left no trail. There had not even been a hint that she had been discovered. And yet Heuk Jin-jo had come crashing in out of nowhere, as if someone had simply handed him the whole truth. Knowing nothing of the Demonic Cult's sacred White Flame or the Divine Maiden who read it, she could make no sense of any of this.
"Il-hye-hyang! I'll start by peeling the skin off that face of yours!"
One of Heuk Jin-jo's masters charged the traitor with teeth bared. Guards tried to bar his path — only for a vivid blade of sword-qi to slash through the air and shear through weapons and flesh alike.
Il-hye-hyang squeezed her eyes shut, certain it was over.
And in that instant, a window exploded inward — and a man and a woman in masks dropped lightly into the heart of the battlefield.
BOOM!
A long staff swept the Haoman fighters charging Il-hye-hyang clean off their feet. The moment one of them lost his grip on his sword, the masked woman snatched it out of the air and carved a blazing white arc of sword-qi through the space between them.
A dazzling sword art that stitched the air between enemies and weapons like scattered starlight.
Shhhk!
Three severed wrists, still clutching their weapons, hit the floor at once.
"Gyaaah!"
Blood fountained from the stumps as the Haoman operatives thrashed and rolled in the pools of their own blood. The men who had been rushing in to execute the traitor froze solid at the sight.
"What… Who the hell are you people?!"
Heuk Jin-jo ground his teeth and bellowed at the masked pair blocking his way.
The masked man at the front looked straight at him and spoke.
"Jin-jo. Don't you know me?"
"…Who are you."
The man clearly knew him. Heuk Jin-jo glared at the two masked figures as if he meant to kill them on the spot, the prize slipping through his fingers right before his eyes, and demanded their identities again.
"I'm your daddy, Jin-jo."
"You son of a—"
All he got back was pure mockery. Heuk Jin-jo wrapped a vivid edge of sword-qi around his short blade.
"Heuk Jin-jo… Grrk."
And then there was the masked woman — staring at him with murder in her eyes, pouring out a killing intent so thick it prickled the skin. She ground her teeth just as hard as he did, her whole body coiled to spring.
Only when the masked man caught her arm and held her back did she drag her reason back into place and re-form her stance.
"I asked you who you are!"
They had something to do with him. Heuk Jin-jo's instincts screamed it. Bursting in at the exact moment he meant to purge a traitor — they had to be connected to Haoman somehow.
"Idiot. We put on masks to hide who we are. You think we're going to tell you? A little slow on the uptake, aren't you?"
"…"
Since ascending to the seat of Gate Lord, Heuk Jin-jo had never met anyone this insolent. Realizing further talk was pointless, he twisted his face into a snarl and snapped an order to his men.
"Enough! Kill them all!"
"Yes, sir!"
In the middle of the wrecked Honghwaru, the masked pair and Haoman's masters slammed into each other.
"Heuk Jin-jo! Heuk Jin-jooo!"
Saturated with razor-edged killing intent, Ilhong tore through the enemy ranks like a whirlwind, sword-qi blazing, screaming the name of her sworn enemy.
"Hey — calm down!"
I was a little rattled by the volcanic fury exploding out of her and had to keep talking her down. Even a Peak Realm master can go down in a stupidly ugly way once they lose their head.
After I reined her in a few times like that, she finally sucked in a breath and got her wits back.
"I am calm."
"Good. We're taking that bastard alive no matter what. Don't worry."
I pointed at Heuk Jin-jo and told her to trust me — and right then, in a lull in the fighting, the man himself suddenly started bolting for the exit.
"B-boss! That bastard's—!"
"Seriously? His own men are still fighting and the leader just—!"
I immediately scattered staff-qi in every direction and moved to chase him down.
And then unknown figures stepped into our path, blocking both me and Ilhong.
THUD!