I'll Just Be Going
It was like a scene straight out of a spy movie.
With a sharp riip, the human-skin mask peeled away.
The face of a middle-aged man twisted into a scowl was revealed underneath. It was the eunuch I had run into at the mulberry fields before.
"Still the same little brat with guts spilling out of his belly."
His eyes were thick with fury. Just like last time, he unleashed a savage aura that pressed down on me hard.
My body locked up stiff, as if I had come face-to-face with a predator. It felt like a heavy boulder had been dropped onto my shoulders.
Sensing a threat to my life, the crimson energy began to seep out on its own, raising a chaotic clamor that screamed for me to kill the man right then and there.
"Ahem. I misspoke."
Something had gone wrong while I was pulling up the memory. I must have saved him under the label "eunuch uncle" back then.
The word just had that much of an impact.
The eunuchs who had been picking fights with me at the silk workshop had been calling him something else in pure terror, I was pretty sure.
"What was it again… Cheon Su… Cheon Su-gyeong?"
"It's Cheon Su-gong, you carp-brained fool."
Cheon Su-gong answered with a thoroughly displeased look.
Ah, right. That had been the name.
The veiled woman's presence had been so overwhelming that my memory of him had gone fuzzy by comparison.
An unavoidable phenomenon, really.
"This rat-sized little—"
His brows shot up. His fist clenched and unclenched over and over.
That was exactly the face Hwang Geolgae made right before he cracked me over the crown of my head.
Remembering that, I hastily switched to a polite tone and changed the subject.
"Anyway, Cheon Su-gong, what were you doing in a place like this?"
He glanced back and forth between me and Ilhong for a moment, then fired a cold question right back at me.
"What about you? I called for a vagabond. Why did a pair of brats show up?"
Even after I had just shown him the vagabond token, he was still asking that.
"Why do you think? Because we are those vagabonds."
"Hah. The Beijing Vagabond Association issued a token to kids like you? I'd have to be an idiot to believe that."
Cheon Su-gong muttered, "What is the world coming to…" and clicked his tongue.
For a troubleshooter job, skill was all that mattered. What did age have to do with anything?
"What's so hard to believe? We've got more than enough ability. You people already benefited from me at the silk workshop, didn't you?"
Why else would Princess Dohwa, who normally never left the Imperial Palace, have risked coming all the way out to the silk workshop?
When the merchant group she was backing fell into crisis, she had clearly meant to force the failing sericulture through on the authority of the imperial bloodline alone.
Even if it meant enduring massive pushback from the eunuchs.
But thanks to me, she hadn't even needed to force anything.
"Hmph! Solving one little sericulture problem and already getting full of yourself."
Cheon Su-gong snorted instead of admitting it cleanly.
Talk about holding a grudge over one little "eunuch" slip of the tongue.
…Actually, now that I thought about it, I might have said it several times.
Anyway, I was here as a vagabond now, so I needed to focus on the job.
"By the way, Cheon Su-gong—you're a eunuch, but you have a son?"
The request had been about finding a missing son, if I remembered right.
A eunuch's child. Had he made the kid before getting castrated?
My eyes and Ilhong's both drifted naturally downward toward his lower half.
"Eyes up. Or you're dead."
"Ahem."
Murderous intent rode every word, so I snapped my gaze back up at once.
Still glaring, Cheon Su-gong laid out the real story behind the request.
"The son was a cover for the job. What I'm actually looking for is the Silkworm Master whose trail went cold around here."
"…!"
The Silkworm Master the imperial court had sent, the one who vanished?
The man Sister Eun Hwaran had cursed under her breath more than once.
And now I was hearing about him again here, of all places.
"The gold-thread contract already went through. What's the point of looking for him now?"
It was like groping around a dead child's balls. Did this really need a high-ranking imperial figure to handle it in person?
"I plan to find the Silkworm Master's corpse, and if any evidence remains, drag the killer into it and put him to use."
He said it while smearing glue back onto the human-skin mask and slapping it into place again.
According to Cheon Su-gong, the Second Prince's faction had clearly been behind the sabotage, so he had come looking for political leverage to pressure them with.
"Find the corpse… You sound pretty sure he's already dead."
Clients looking for missing people usually hoped they were still alive. In a case like this, a living man would have been more useful anyway.
"Of course. Nine out of ten people who vanish after getting swept up in imperial power struggles turn up as corpses."
Brutal. Truly.
That side of the world somehow felt like it had a higher death rate than the Murim itself.
"I'll just be going."
My long experience as a troubleshooter whispered a warning. Commission or no commission, the smart move was to bolt.
I tossed out a "Good luck with that" and tried to run—only for Cheon Su-gong to appear right in front of me with a gust of wind-like footwork.
"You've already seen my bare face and you think you're walking away? Not a chance, brat."
If I hadn't seen it, maybe. But now that the mask was off and I knew his identity, he was saying I had to see this through to the end.
He must have drawn up his internal energy; a blue light flashed in both eyes.
"Ah, for fuck's sake."
This was exactly why I hated getting tangled up with masters. Every last one of them did whatever they damn well pleased.
Out of pure spite I needed to rack up good deeds and become a master myself as soon as possible.
"Do you even need us in the first place? You already seem to know the place he disappeared."
I had watched him terrify a whole group of eunuchs with a single sword stroke laced with blade qi last time.
Why would a master of that caliber need a couple of mid-rank vagabonds whose combat power was, frankly, middling?
"Here. Catch."
Cheon Su-gong flicked a long object he had leaned against a nearby tree straight at me.
It was a tool with a broad iron plate fitted onto a sturdy raw-wood handle.
"What's this? Some kind of farming implement like a shovel or a spade?"
Ilhong turned it over with curious eyes, having never seen one before.
I, on the other hand, understood its purpose on pure instinct after two years of hard living.
A tool for scooping something up and digging without end.
"We'll have to dig all over the place. You think I'm going to shovel at my age? And even if we find it, someone has to move the body. That's why I need vagabonds."
In short, he needed pack mules and laborers he could work hard without any blowback if something went wrong.
"…You have subordinate eunuchs. Use them."
"Those idiots are busy with something else right now. And I prefer working alone. Draws less attention."
Hwang Geolgae was the same way. Why did every master capable of fighting a hundred men alone love being a lone wolf so much?
"Grab the shovel and let's go."
And so I ended up stuck doing unseasonable shovel work even in the Murim.
"Ugh. I'm screwed. Totally screwed."
Searching for a corpse tied to the imperial court… If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have just closed my eyes and taken a jealous-lover case instead.
When I got back I was going to have a serious talk with the Association Leader.
I yanked the shovel free from where it had been stuck in the ground.
Feeling the familiar grain of a shovel handle, we headed toward Baekyang Village.
"By the way."
Cheon Su-gong, who had been stomping along in the lead, suddenly spoke up.
"How did you figure out this face was a human-skin mask?"
He served Princess Dohwa as her closest aide and carried more secrets than most. Having his disguise blown clearly grated on him.
"…You're asking that now?"
"Some insolent little bastard kept stepping on my reverse scale, so I never got the chance to ask."
"Ah."
I immediately clamped my mouth shut.
From now on I would carefully call him Cheon Su-gong every single time and never slip up again.
"Anyway, how did you see through this body's transformation? Speak."
I couldn't exactly say it was thanks to the Heavenly Killing Eyes. I could only scratch the side of my head in awkward silence—until Ilhong stepped in for me.
"I noticed the discrepancy in the face and signaled the boss."
"Hm? You did…? How?"
It wasn't me, who already knew him, but a boy he was meeting for the first time who had spotted it. Cheon Su-gong looked genuinely surprised as he asked again.
"A human-skin mask made of pigskin, no matter how finely crafted, always leaves a faint unnatural quality in the wrinkles because of the material's limits. That's how I noticed."
At those words, Cheon Su-gong carefully ran his fingers over his own wrinkled face.
"Hmph. Next time I'll just make it out of human skin."
He tossed out that blood-chilling line like it was nothing.
Ignoring my horrified reaction, he continued to stare hard at Ilhong's face.
"Pigskin and unnatural quality… Even with that knowledge, actually noticing it on sight is a completely different matter."
"I may not look like much, but I've had clever hands since I was little… I've even made masks myself several times."
Ilhong made it clear she had practical experience, not just theory.
A glint of interest appeared in Cheon Su-gong's eyes as he watched.
"And even if it's pigskin, if you train in the art of transformation and fill in every gap, there's no real need to use human skin, Cheon Su-gong."
"…Oh-ho. An interesting little one."
Apparently that answer had satisfied him.
A faint smile touched Cheon Su-gong's lips.
"Knowledge and skill like that at such a young age… Not bad at all."
"You flatter me."
"It's a waste keeping you next to an ill-mannered brat like that."
"Wait, Cheon Su-gong, what is that supposed to mean?"
I protested, looking wronged, but was ignored on the spot.
"Salmun? Haomu Gate? Or the Demonic Alliance, maybe? Well, Murim affairs don't matter much… Child, I won't ask your true identity. How about coming to work for our organization?"
And right in front of my face, the eunuch uncle made a brazen attempt at talent theft.
Trying to poach my client and precious subordinate? I had never seen a man with less business ethics.
"I already claimed this one first. Don't you dare set your eyes on her!"
I yanked Ilhong's back toward me as I shouted.
Ilhong let out a strange little "Eep" and came along without resistance.
The job offer must have been tempting; her eyes looked a little glazed.
Don't tell me she was seriously thinking of walking into the demonic realm of palace intrigue?
"Hey. Don't even think about it. If you go there, you'll become a eunuch."
Ilhong, still pressed against me with her nape turning red, mumbled in a mosquito-thin voice.
"B-Boss… I never had one to begin with…"
Ah. Right. That was true.
Seeing her face disguised as a boy every day, I sometimes forgot.
"Huh."
Cheon Su-gong, who had been looking at Ilhong's expression head-on from the side I couldn't see, suddenly wore a face of complete understanding.
"I see. So that's your preference… In that case there's no point in trying to recruit any further."
With a complicated look, he accepted it on his own and withdrew the offer.
What exactly had he seen?
"Um… Thank you for the offer, but I still want to stay with the boss."
See? Unlike certain people, this one had loyalty.
Getting stabbed in the gut to save her had been worth it after all.
"See that? Trying to test loyalty, huh? Don't go coveting other people's subordinates."
What kind of man tried to bid on a stock someone else had already bottom-fished?
"Hmph. When did I ever covet? I just thought it would be better to keep someone next to Princess Dohwa than leave them to rot beside a brat like you."
"Hey, 'rot'? Watch your mouth."
Rot? I was planning to make her the Gate Master of Haomu Gate someday.
And as that Gate Master's top connection, I would get to enjoy the infrastructure and information network right alongside her.
"Insolent little— If Her Highness didn't already look on you favorably, I would have taught you a lesson long ago."
"Oh, so Princess Dohwa thinks well of me? Thanks for the intel."
As long as I had that noble lady's protection, it seemed I wouldn't be getting beaten up by this uncle anytime soon.
Useful thing to know.
"Don't get cocky."
"I'm not getting cocky. I'm just happy."
"That is getting cocky."
"Why?"
After fending off the headhunting attempt and bickering with the eunuch who clearly couldn't stand me, we walked for about the time it took to eat a meal.
In the distance, a small, quiet village began to come into view.
A waist-high wooden fence—probably for livestock—circled the place. Small fields and a stream completed the pastoral countryside scene.
That had to be Baekyang Village, the place where the Silkworm Master's trail had gone cold.
Hm?
The moment we set foot at the village entrance, a strange energy brushed against me.
I couldn't put a name to it, but it was oddly unpleasant and unsettling.
"W-Who are you people?"
Villagers had already gathered and were whispering at the sight of unexpected visitors.
Word of outsiders must have reached him; an old man who looked like the village head came hurrying toward us.
"It's not yet time for the peddlers to visit… What business brings you to Baekyang Village?"
He gave our clothes a quick once-over as he spoke.
No packs, no carrying frames. The village head looked between us with clear puzzlement.
"We're looking for my son."
Cheon Su-gong scrunched every wrinkle on his face and launched into the performance of a grieving old man who had lost his child.
"I heard his trail went cold near this village after asking around…"
He even misted his eyes a little, claiming his insides were burning up after months with no word. Ilhong and I both struggled to keep our faces under control.
"So, Village Head, would it be all right if we asked the residents whether anyone saw anything and searched the area around the village…?"
"Aigoo, of course. They say all under heaven are brothers—how could we refuse under circumstances like these?"
Once the long, tear-jerking story ended, the village head said he had a child of similar age himself and continued with a sympathetic look.
"And if someone went missing while passing near our village, it leaves an unpleasant feeling for us as well. Naturally we should help."
Perhaps learning our purpose had eased his tension.
Wearing a kindly smile and saying of course he would help, the village head walked steadily toward us.
In that instant, crimson energy surged up across my skin and began to tremble violently.
In this peaceful village, the Heavenly Killing Eyes that sensed murderous intent suddenly went wild.
"…!"
No matter how thoroughly someone hid their killing intent through rigorous training, everything was laid bare before the Heavenly Killing Star.
It seemed we weren't the only ones putting on an act.
Ghost Blade, an assassin of the Killing Shadow Gate.
When the target finally stepped into the trap he had laid just in case, he nearly cheered out loud.
At last!
Through endless training he had completely erased his killing intent, and he was a first-class assassin who had successfully murdered Peak Realm masters more than once.
The man he was targeting this time was the eunuch known as Cheon Su-gong—said to be the Third Princess's right hand.
He had recently received intelligence that Cheon Su-gong had not returned to the Imperial Palace and was instead wandering from place to place.
That meant the things he could be after were limited, so Ghost Blade had carefully scattered bait…
I never expected him to take it this easily.
Still wearing the appearance of an old man, Ghost Blade grinned inwardly.
The target was walking into the trap of his own free will.
Perhaps, like so many masters, he was charging in with the arrogant belief that he could smash any trap with his personal martial power.
But Ghost Blade had already assassinated more than a few of those arrogant, complacent masters.
Just a little closer…
He tightened his grip on the cylindrical hidden weapon inside his robes as he approached.
Blood poison that killed at the slightest graze. And dozens of iron needles coated in that poison—loaded into the Killing Shadow Gate's secret weapon.
If it detonated at point-blank range, even a Peak Realm master couldn't react in time.
Even if the target somehow dodged, two short blades would immediately launch into the Killing Calamity Chaos Dance, and no martial artist had ever survived that combination.
Just two more steps…
For the killing move to land properly, he had to close the distance as much as possible—
"Eunuch Uncle! That bastard's trying to kill youuuu—!"
An absurd uninvited guest appeared and dumped ashes all over the finished meal.
Son of a—!