Somehow, Imperial Connections
The moment Cheon Su-gong stepped in, the whole mess sorted itself out in a heartbeat.
Blood soaked the ground, and headless corpses lay scattered everywhere. The assassins' faces in particular were frozen in the purest look of absolute horror—whatever they had seen in their final second had clearly not been pleasant.
"You were struggling earlier, yet you cleaned them up in a flash?"
Maybe he had been stalling just long enough to figure out where these killers came from. Cheon Su-gong casually wiped the blood from his blade on the front of the headless village chief's robe.
"If you're going to roam the jianghu, you'd better keep at least one card hidden up your sleeve."
A fundamental rule of survival for martial artists: hide thirty percent of your real strength. Something like that, I supposed. Last time, when he had threatened those eunuchs and unleashed that razor-sharp sword qi, I had roughly pegged him as Peak Realm.
"Don't tell me you're Transcendental Peak? Or even Transcendent Realm?"
"None of your business, you little punk."
He snorted and slid the cleaned blade home with a soft shing—click. So, roughly around that level after all. If he were only Peak Realm, there was no way he could have finished three opponents of equal strength in the blink of an eye.
A martial artist above Transcendental Peak, huh.
Even at Transcendental Peak alone you could handle two or three fighters with ease, and if you felt like it you could wipe out a mid-tier sect single-handedly. You became a walking strategic weapon of the Central Plains. The idea that one human body could produce that kind of power still felt impossibly distant from where I stood as a mere Second-class.
Just who the hell was this guy inside the Imperial Palace?
"So. What exactly are you?"
"Huh? I'm just a guy named Dan Mujin."
Cheon Su-gong beat me to the exact question I had wanted to ask him.
"Those bastards were first-rate assassins at the very least. They kept their killing intent under perfect control. Yet the second you laid eyes on them, you saw straight through their disguise?"
Ah. He meant the part where I had screamed that the kindly-looking village chief was actually a raving murderous psychopath.
"I've got a hidden card of my own."
No matter how carefully someone tried to hide it, this body of mine possessed the Heavenly Killing Eyes that could pick up even the thinnest thread of murderous intent. Explaining that, though, would probably get me branded a public enemy of the Murim, so I just recycled the same evasive line I had heard a moment ago and brushed it off.
Cheon Su-gong's eyes narrowed to needle slits.
"Hmph. And earlier… you were clumsily copying the martial arts I was using, weren't you?"
His realm was high enough that he could afford to spare attention even while fighting.
"I was just mimicking you a little."
"For simple mimicry, there was a surprising amount of principle packed into those footwork and staff swings of yours."
That was just the Heavenly Killing Star's passive that automatically learned techniques whenever my life was on the line—another thing that was a pain in the ass to explain.
"…Then let's just say I had two cards hidden up my sleeve."
"Ha."
Cheon Su-gong let out a disbelieving laugh. Then he scratched his chin and slowly, thoroughly looked me up and down without a word.
Getting that intense once-over from a middle-aged eunuch was… something else.
"…What?"
I cracked first, feeling weirdly uneasy.
"Extraordinary martial talent, and a constitution this sensitive to killing intent…"
He seemed to be turning something over carefully in his mind. That expression, that posture—I had seen it not long ago. It was exactly the same look people got when they were about to snatch Ilhong away because they had fallen for her unusual skills and knowledge.
"Your name was Dan Mujin, correct?"
"Yes, what of it?"
"Have you ever considered becoming a eunuch and serving Her Highness Princess Dohwa?"
An out-of-nowhere Imperial Palace scouting offer. The problem was the job title: eunuch.
"I'd be fine getting hired as a vagabond, but eunuch is a bit…"
"Why? You'd eat well, sleep warm, and if you come under me you can spend your days arresting and beating the crap out of people you don't like."
The way he casually mentioned thrashing people made it pretty clear this guy really was from the Eastern Depot—the place that made even high officials piss themselves. And he clearly wanted to cultivate my killing-intent detection and use me as a human canary to protect the Princess from assassins.
"But to become a eunuch you have to cut… that… off, right?"
"Hmph. In the face of a greater cause, it's nothing more than a tiny scrap of flesh."
He snorted like it was no big deal.
"Mine is not tiny."
"…"
Cheon Su-gong was briefly speechless. Then his eyes shifted into pure what kind of crazy bastard is this territory. Beside us, Ilhong stared blankly, her gaze flicking between my face and my lower half.
The surrounding reaction was getting a little awkward. But all I had done was correct an inaccurate statement. I could look up at the heavens without the slightest shame.
"Hah… Forget I said anything just now. Leave a bastard like you near the Princess and you'll cause a catastrophe."
He had run the numbers, decided I was uncontrollable, and washed his hands of the whole idea.
"Sure. I wasn't interested anyway."
And just like that I turned down the most hair-raising recruitment pitch of my life. No matter how badly I wanted to climb the ladder, eunuch was a hard pass. Chop off the source of my confidence for a little power? Yeah, no. I planned to keep everything and still grab the prize.
"Anyway. The fact that you even considered hiring me means you've fully acknowledged my skill, right?"
The first time we met he had mocked me for being a kid playing at the vagabond life. Now he was offering me a job under him.
"Hmph. Don't get cocky. All I said was that you weren't completely terrible."
He looked like he genuinely disliked me after my several verbal slip-ups, yet he still had no choice but to admit it. Coming from a super expert like him, that was basically high praise. Getting recognition from someone of that level made all the blood, sweat, and beatings of training feel worth it.
"Then take these and start digging."
He tossed two worn shovels at us.
"Ah, right. Shit."
I had completely forgotten, basking in the sense of achievement. We had been dragged out here to dig graves. Too lazy to do it himself, he had decided to grab a couple of convenient vagabonds and dump the grunt work on us.
"The ground over there is strangely soft. Dig it all out before sundown. Or I dock your pay."
Getting complimented did not reduce the amount of work waiting for me. The corners of my mouth that had been climbing dropped right back down.
"Ugh."
Thunk. Thunk. Scrape.
The shovel blade bit into the earth and came up loaded with soil. For more than half a day we kept digging on that flat, soft patch of ground that looked perfect for burying people.
"Boss… I think I'm losing my mind…"
"You're fine. Your mind's not going anywhere. Keep digging."
The human spirit was tougher than people gave it credit for. I could personally guarantee it—I had spent entire days on snow-clearing detail with nothing but a shovel in my hands.
Clunk.
"Huh?"
The tip of my shovel found a corpse. When we unearthed it, it wasn't the Imperial Observer we were looking for. It was almost certainly one of the original residents of White Sheep Village. Roughly twenty bodies in total, all dumped into one big pit and buried together.
I had seen plenty of corpses in my old line of work looking for missing people, but the sight of an entire village buried in one hole still hit hard even for me.
"Those sons of bitches… wiping them all out really was the right call."
Granted, Cheon Su-gong had been the one screaming "Leave no witnesses!" and sending every head flying except one. But I had done my part too—smashing bones and bursting skin, making sure they suffered plenty on the way out.
"Oh."
The moment that satisfying thought of a proper beatdown settled in, the energy coiled in my dantian started tingling even more vigorously. So good deeds really were judged by intention; even the mindset alone could change things. From now on I would have to thrash villains even more enthusiastically under the spirit of Evil Must Be Cut Down. Of course, the standard for "villain" would be decided by how much they pissed me off.
"Boss, this body's clothes look different."
Ilhong, sweating like a freshly assigned recruit and digging with everything she had, found something else near the pit. It definitely felt different from the villagers who had been wearing nothing but rough sacks.
"Hmph. Looks like we've found our man. The missing Imperial Observer."
Cheon Su-gong pulled a paper with a facial sketch from his robes and muttered to himself. So the Imperial Observer the court had sent had gotten tangled up in a power struggle and ended up a permanent resident of the underworld.
"Just as I thought. The wounds match the assassins' daggers. And they coated them with Seven Orifices Poison? The decay is strangely slow."
He casually patted the corpse down, performing an autopsy like it was nothing. Assassins apparently smeared extreme poison on their blades to make absolutely sure even a graze would kill. My Heavenly Killing Star body had survived being crushed by a cliff, but poison was an unknown variable. Better keep clear of it for now.
"Looking at the poison, the martial arts, and the blade work… either Blood Shadow Gate or Ghost Shadow Gate. I'll need to examine the traces more carefully and dig deeper. Looks like things are about to get busy."
He muttered while carefully inspecting the remaining assassins. On top of that he checked every last one of the trash-mob murderers for tattoos or any distinctive features. Next he would wake the one he had left alive and unconscious and begin the torture—sorry, the interrogation.
"Ilhong, let's just bury these poor people properly."
While he was busy, I laid the villagers to rest in a sunny spot. It wasn't that I had suddenly turned into a saint; I just figured if I ignored them my dreams would get nasty later. As for the assassins' bodies—the animals could have them.
"Honestly, doing things nobody even asked for."
The digging continued. We had set out early in the morning, yet the sun was already perched on the mountain ridge. Cheon Su-gong finished his interrogation, dusted off his hands, walked over, and snorted when he saw what we were doing.
"What a strange fellow. Who's going to thank you for this?"
The Seongun Simbeop would, actually. It had started as pure discomfort, but the more bodies I buried the more the tingling in my dantian grew. That meant more internal energy I could rip out of the malevolent star next time. I was already looking forward to the next cycle of energy circulation.
"Boss is always like this. Kind of weird, right?"
Ilhong set her shovel down, stretched her stiff back, and spoke like she had gotten used to it. The truth was I hadn't always been like this. I had lived my entire previous life as an extreme profit-maximizer. I was only working hard here because good deeds came with actual rewards. If my old world had had something like this, I might have grown up nice and never given the orphanage director ulcers. Let's just blame the world for failing to nurture me properly.
"Cheon Su-gong, are you finished here?"
I asked while clapping the dirt and dust off my clothes. The second we got back to the Vagabond Association lodging I was hitting the bath hard.
"Yes. I found a lead. If I keep digging, I should turn up a nice card to pressure the Second Prince with."
Looks like the effort had paid off. A faint smile touched Cheon Su-gong's lips.
"Then, since the request is complete, I believe there's something you're supposed to hand over."
Settlement time. I rubbed my hands together like a merchant and said it straight. Work done meant that day's wages were due—especially when the client wasn't some old man who had lost a child, but a rich official of the court.
"And you know this was never a three-silver-coin job, right?"
He had said it was just simple digging. Then assassins had popped out and I had been forced to beat down more than a dozen Third-class punks. No matter how I ran the numbers, the return on investment did not add up.
"Hmph. Getting full of yourself just because you smacked around a few pieces of trash."
This old man, seriously. I planted myself in front of him with fire in my eyes, ready to demand proper pay. Back in the day when I did construction work I had once missile-dropkicked a foreman who tried to short me. Princess Dohwa seemed like a good person, but the people around her had terrible personalities—
That was when Cheon Su-gong flicked a gold coin with his finger.
"Catch."
The brightly gleaming gold coin traced a perfect arc and settled into my palm with a soft plop. The pure, radiant color was enough to turn even the onlooker's pupils golden.
"Aigoo, boss, you didn't have to go this far!"
What do you know—he actually had excellent character and integrity. I immediately felt ashamed for almost cursing such a fine gentleman in a moment of irritation. The second I closed my fist around the gold coin, Ilhong started grinning like an idiot right next to me. It must have registered as more than fair compensation for the danger we had been through, because the Heavenly Killing Star didn't even try to dig its claws in.
"Wow… back when I was a beggar I couldn't even get a single silver coin."
Ilhong's expression turned wistful as old memories surfaced. Ever since she learned martial arts and became a vagabond she seemed to be seeing a lot more silver and gold. Maybe that was why adults always went around telling kids to learn a real skill.
"Half of that is hush money. As far as you're concerned, today you simply found a pitiful old man's lost child. You know nothing about any assassins. Understood?"
"Yessir yessir, of course, whatever you say."
"Creepy. Switch back to your normal way of talking."
"Of course."
High-ranking people really did spend differently. That was why a man had to play in the big leagues. If I wanted to land another big score later, connections with the Imperial family were essential.
"Go on ahead. I still have cleanup left."
Maybe more traces or evidence remained.
"Yes, we'll be on our—oh, right. Please tell the Princess that if she ever needs help like this again, she can call me anytime."
In the modern world I would have handed out business cards and asked for word-of-mouth, but unfortunately I didn't have any.
"Insolent brat. As I told you last time, Her Highness already has plenty of talent around her."
Right. Back then he had said the Eastern Depot was enough and they didn't need the likes of me. Still, nothing to lose by poking one more time.
"I know. Just think of it as a greeting and pass the word along."
"Hmph. I'll think about it."
With that he turned and headed back toward the village. The fact that he left the door open made me feel like the tsundere old man would actually deliver the message. If not, oh well.
"Let's head to the lodging, Ilhong."
"Yes! Finally!"