The Bloodsucker
The Central Plains had long since developed a culture of tea-drinking, born of necessity from the chalky, hard water that was common everywhere. People called it the art of tea, treating it as a basic courtesy of any cultivated person — and even the foulest-tempered martial artists tended to settle down, if only for a little while, over a post-meal cup.
"So. What are you doing here?"
A prim face, eyes slanting sharply upward at the corners. At a glance you might have thought she was angry, but I knew better by now. That was just her resting expression.
"I was on my way to the Murim Alliance Headquarters when my client said he wanted to see Shaolin Temple, so we stopped off."
"Heh. So you're on an escort job?"
Dang Yeohye snickered as if the sight of me working amused her.
"Yes. A Beijing merchant — wants to take the whole family to watch the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering."
They'd probably spend a few more days sightseeing before catching up. Looking at them, I had to admit some people lived easy lives. Meanwhile I had a star jammed into my skull and spent every free moment stacking good karma.
"Pretty nice life for a guy on escort duty. Flowers blooming in both hands, huh?"
She flicked her gaze between Ilhong and Jo Harang, who had followed me over, and her lips curled in clear disapproval.
"…I'm Ilhong. Good to see you again."
"Jo Harang, fellow vagabond. It's an honor to meet the famed Poison Claw Mountain Blood of the Dang Clan."
Ilhong offered only a slight nod from behind me; Jo Harang, every inch the seasoned jianghu hand, clasped her fist in a proper martial salute.
"Yeah, sure. Nice to meet you, whatever."
Dang Yeohye waved them off. Unlike with me, her reaction was thoroughly lukewarm. She really did have strong likes and dislikes.
"As you just heard — this one's my subordinate. Pretty face, but a man. And this one's a friendly escort colleague. Flowers, my ass."
The former was a stock I was holding as a long-term low-point investment. The latter was a potential Heavenly Killing Star assassin who might one day take my head. Without meaning to, I was living by that old advice: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
"What about the one watching you from a distance? Is he with you too?"
"Ah — that's probably a Beggar Sect type. You can ignore him."
Peak Realm experts. Of course she'd pick up that faint presence. I'd only noticed because Salsung had scribbled a tip on the floor for me.
"…What the hell have you been doing to get the Beggar Sect putting a tail on you?"
"Beats me. I did beat up some bandits and human traffickers recently."
For now I was letting it ride — there was no malice in the gaze. If anything, the growing, inexplicable expectation in those eyes was starting to make me uncomfortable. I'd been swinging the Dog-Beating Staff pretty hard of late; someone in the Beggar Sect must have caught wind of it. The fact that they'd only assigned a watcher suggested they were still at the suspicion stage.
"So what brings you to this city?"
Apparently Neungsam, Dang Yeohye's personal mind-reader, had gone off to the market street for water and provisions. I crunched on the snacks set beside the teacup and asked.
"Hey. 'You'? That form of address is a little — no, a lot — weird."
"Hmm. Then… Heroine Dang Yeohye?"
"No, not that either, you idiot…"
She circled around it, unwilling to say the words herself. Without Neungsam glued to her side, conversation really was exhausting.
"We had a deal, remember?"
Her eyes held a clear expectation. Of course I remembered. I'd just been dodging it because I didn't want to say it out loud.
"Ugh."
Dang Yeohye was in her early twenties, but a childhood poisoning accident had left her height stunted. This body of mine was still a teenager and already quite a bit taller. The second I called her that out on the street, everyone would stare.
"…Yeohye-noona."
"That's right. I'm your noona. Heh heh."
Apparently satisfied with the elder-sister treatment, she even rose on her tiptoes to give my head a few pats. Between Eun Hwaran, with whom I'd formed a sworn sibling bond, and now her — two older sisters already in this world. My previous life's age had been closing in on thirty. The feeling was… complicated.
"…Mujin. You two seem pretty close."
As Dang Yeohye stepped back with a pleased look, Jo Harang slid in sideways and whispered.
"Hmph. He and I have crossed the line between life and death together more than once. Of course we're close."
She'd overheard that, too. Dang Yeohye snorted and flaunted our history.
"Some random vagabond who shared one job doesn't get to cut in. You hear me, Jo whatever-your-name-is?"
"…It's Jo Harang."
"Right. Jo-something."
There was a strange undercurrent of rivalry. They'd only just met. Probably my imagination.
"Anyway, Yeohye-noona — why stop in Dengfeng—"
"Hey. Drop the formalities. Manners between us? Please."
And what exactly are we to each other? She shot a sidelong glance at Jo Harang, as if conscious of her, and told me to speak freely.
"So why did you stop in Dengfeng, Noona?"
Third time asking. My blunt tone drew a disbelieving little laugh from her.
"I told you to talk casual, but… you really went straight for it, huh."
Jo Harang just shrugged beside me, as if she'd already been through this. If you looked closely, they were all younger than my real age anyway. No need to hold back.
"Well, I was headed for the Murim Alliance myself. Then a target turned up in this city."
Dang Yeohye spoke with her dark-green fingernails tucked into her loose sleeves. Those long sleeves spat out poison needles, darts, and hidden weapons on command — a magic sleeve if I'd ever seen one.
"What kind of target?"
"Ever heard of him? The Bloodsucker — the one who drinks people's blood."
The name rang a bell. More precisely, I'd heard it in front of the wanted posters stuck up at the yamen. The one whose bounty had recently doubled after he tore through some high official?
"I've been wondering for a while — doesn't the Dang Clan pay you? Why is the second daughter of the house out bounty-hunting like some broke vagabond?"
Last escort job she'd piggybacked on us claiming she was short of cash, too. Vagabonds like us chased bounties because we were always strapped. But Dang Yeohye was the second daughter of the Sichuan Dang Clan, famous for its wealth even in that province.
"They don't. And even if they did, I wouldn't crawl to my older brother over pocket money."
"…Hmm."
Come to think of it, she'd said last time that she'd left home to screw her older brother over. Her family situation was complicated in its own way.
"So I'm joining the Myeolmade. They give you lodging and a salary, and I can run poison experiments on scum. Perfect, right?"
The Demon Extermination Unit, where the Evil Killing Divine Maiden held real power. Dang Yeohye apparently had more plans for this trip than just attending the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering.
"The entry requirements are steeper than I thought, though. They want you to bag a famous murderer first."
The Bloodsucker was a major bounty — fifty gold taels from the yamen alone. As a trophy to salt and deliver to the Myeolmade, you couldn't ask for better.
"Do you know the Bloodsucker's last known location?"
If he'd been a years-old case, maybe not — but this one had recently killed a high official and changed his escape route, so even Ilhong had no fix on him.
"According to information I bought from the Beggar Sect… he's definitely holed up in this very inn."
Dang Yeohye pretended to sip her tea while her eyes made a casual circuit of the room. From the wanted poster I'd seen, he had catfish lips and a big mole on his right cheek. The rest of the details were fuzzy, but Ilhong's memory was exceptional — that should cover us.
"The problem is he almost certainly used a disguise technique. The description on the poster is useless now."
Damn it. So it wasn't fine after all. She'd found the location but not the man, and was killing time here nursing tea.
"Isn't he weaker than you, Noona? Why not just tear the place apart?"
According to the poster, the Bloodsucker was early Peak Realm. Poison Claw Mountain Blood, as I understood it, sat at the tip of Peak. And Dang Clan martial artists were a headache even at equal rank.
"His lightfoot skill is insane. Why do you think he's still alive? If you don't snatch him in one go, there is no second chance."
Once he got wind and ran, even she would struggle to catch him. Which meant we had to pick out this legendary killer — the one who butchered civilians without a blink — with absolute precision.
Hearing that… this is exactly my field.
Who was I? The Heavenly Killing Star, who could read murderous intent at a glance and recognize the karmic weight of evil slaughter in an instant.
"I… think I know who the Bloodsucker is right now."
I opened the Heavenly Killing Eye — the one I usually kept shut because it felt like it was chewing my mind in real time — and a crushing mass of slaughter-karma slammed into me. The malice reeked so badly I almost spat out the snack I'd been crunching.
"…You're sure?"
"Yes. On my grandfather's honor."
I thumped my chest a couple of times for emphasis — meaning I couldn't possibly be wrong.
"Boss, you don't have a grandfather."
"Shh. Quiet."
Classic detective-story cliché. That was how sure I was.
"If you know, tell me."
"For free?"
"Hey. It's you and me."
"The closer you are, the cleaner the accounts."
That was how you kept a relationship lasting. Even with the closest of friends, if one side quietly took all the gains, unspoken resentment would eventually dig a trench. And setting that aside — money was always a case of the more, the better. It kept a person from crawling, let them stand tall in the face of injustice. Sometimes it even let you give like a minister and rack up good karma while you were at it.
"I'll point him out like a fortune-teller. We split the bounty fifty-fifty."
"You little highway robber. I'm the one doing the catching — why do you get half?"
Dang Yeohye's brows snapped together at once. Yes, it was a bit much. But that was how you negotiated — start high and work down.
"Then thirty percent."
"Not a chance. Fifteen."
"Come on, we're close. That's too tight."
I threw her own words right back at her.
"There's still a line. You flap your mouth once and take thirty? Does that make sense?"
Flap my mouth? I was deploying the rare ability of the Heavenly Killing Star, thank you very much.
"Twenty. Without me you might tag the wrong guy and walk away with nothing, Noona."
I leaned on the last word. Her expression softened a fraction. Had proper elder-sibling treatment been that scarce for her all this time? It was almost pitiful.
"Hmph. Fine. If you nail it, as your noona I can yield that much."
Playing little brother had paid off. There was a condition attached, but I had her agreement.
"So who the hell is this Bloodsucker?"
She stared hard, impatient for the answer.
"The waiter who just walked up to your nose, Noona."
"…"
The waiter, who had been setting down a teacup that already carried a strange, murderous edge, went rigid. A beat of silence settled over our table. Dang Yeohye wordlessly raised her inner energy, eyes sharp on the man.
"…For real?"
The suspiciously featured waiter answered that one himself.
"Oh, fuck—!"
Crash!
Having received a weighty(?) mission from a Beggar Sect elder, Ma Jungcheon — or more precisely, the Four Absolutes disciple Park Chil — had begun surveilling a young man named Dan Mujin. At present he was observing a fight while drafting a letter. A sheet of fine paper that, given its importance, would almost certainly receive the "Urgent" seal at the local Beggar Sect branch. An interim report on a certain individual.
Martial skill: Medium. Talent, however, is exceptionally high. Appears to have reached First-class Realm only recently.
When he'd first joined them, the youth had been no more than a Second-class martial artist. Then, overnight, he'd split a tree in half with a single staff blow — and Park Chil had nearly jumped out of his skin. That crushing force and destructive power were unmistakably the product of internal energy.
Character: Superior. Does not take pleasure in killing; practices good deeds.
His speech was rough, but his conduct ultimately bent toward righteousness, and he seemed to dislike killing quite a bit. Overall, the makings of a proper chivalrous hero.
As for personality, though… ahem.
On that point, the hand holding the brush refused to move.
"Die, you piece of shit!"
"Gyaaah!"
Dang Yeohye was locked in a death match with the Bloodsucker, long nails flashing.
"That's it! That's our Noona!"
"Fuck, Mujin! Stop cheering and help! You too, Jo-something!"
Jo Harang crashed into the fight, greatsword swinging hard.
"It's Jo Harang!"
Weapons sparked and clashed, locking and breaking apart.
"Go, Jo Harang! You've got this!"
"Hey! Cut the crap and fight with us!"
"I've got someone peeping right now — kind of awkward to start swinging my staff!"
They tore the inn apart in a violent free-for-all. The surroundings had already become pure chaos.
Still, the youth might one day become Dragon-Head Branch Leader. Park Chil wanted to write something positive… but what?
Ah. Of course.
A perfect description flashed through his mind.
Strongly resembles the current Dragon-Head Branch Leader.
It said a great deal in few words. A temperament that could lurch in any direction. A man capable of eccentric outbursts at any moment. And so, in a side alley of Dengfeng, a report destined to turn the stomachs of Kaifeng's high officials was completed.